


10-4: Bad Company

by jcrowquill



Series: Spare the Angels [7]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angel Mythology, Hell Flashbacks, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, PTSD, awkward sex scene, grace extraction, knights of hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-19
Updated: 2014-10-18
Packaged: 2018-02-09 13:20:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 29,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1984488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jcrowquill/pseuds/jcrowquill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Abaddon courts Arakiel's favor, forcing the angel to choose allies.  Dean and Sam make the decision to try to restore Gadreel's grace, and finally begin to formulate their plan to get the trapped angels out of Hell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It happened on a Tuesday afternoon.  Jacob Mueller had been been finishing up the deployment of a basic website for a singularly idiotic client in New York, one who wanted something “high contrast but muted and gentle, familiar but completely new.”  He’d presented them with a unique, elegant custom build a few weeks before but predictably they’d forced him to rework it until it was considerably less sharp and markedly less modern. He had drawn the line at a rotating 3D “contact us” graphic and Comic Sans font, but the final site was still rather awful.

He wasn’t particularly proud to be putting it out into the world, but for $6,000 upfront and $150 a month upkeep, he wasn’t going to suddenly get stuck on the ideals of artistic vision; he was perfectly comfortable with selling out from 8-5 if it meant that he could have a decent apartment and eat out a couple times a month.

The ground rattled in one of those weak, almost earthquakes that St. Louis was not supposed to have.  He realized that he had spaced out when he noticed that the progress bar had disappeared entirely and the FTP connection had timed out.  Sighing, he logged back in to make sure that the files had transferred, then went to the live site to confirm that it was running correctly.  He needed to get an intern for testing - he'd been an intern only a couple years before and he had certainly done a good amount of mindless clicking around horrible client websites to check for errors.

Something glimmered on the edge of his peripheral vision, and a voice, sweet and desperate spoke into his thoughts. 

 _There is a girl that I need to save_ , it said, _I told her that I would protect her and I need your help._

It told him that its name was Arakiel and that there was a young woman bleeding out from a wound that she had suffered because of him.  When it asked again for his help, he said yes.

It seemed so much like a dream that he couldn't see a reason not to say yes.  It hardly seemed real, and he rarely said no in dreams.  Barely breath later, light poured down his throat and wrapped around him from the inside.

It didn't hurt - it was like sliding into a warm bath where the water soaked all the through.  He was warm, then almost too warm, and then he felt as though something deep inside him was ablaze like a shooting star.  It didn't hurt, but something in the sensation made him want to scream just to relieve the pressure.  He felt as though his mind was folding open, leaving it an open bowl to fill with stars and the void of a million years of space.  He knew that if this continued, he would go crazy.  Crash and burn.

 _Shh.  Shh,_ the voice said, _Is it too much?  Let me help._

The intensity dulled, like the relief of turning out the lights to treat a headache.  He was floating again, and then it was nothing except quiet interspersed with moments of clarity and power, glimpses of someone else moving his body and speaking with his voice in an archaic, overly formal diction.

The last moment of sight was a mind-bending flash.  It was many things at once, just in that instant - a slim, tired man in a trenchcoat with four broad black wings, but he was also simultaneously a pale blue colossus with multiple heads and a gleaming star at his heart. He remembers looking at the creature's feathers and thinking that it was the first time that he had ever looked at black and actually seen every color at once. 

He was also aware that he was something different, something strong - and bigger even than the blue creature.  He intuitively knew that it was an angel.  There was a moment of an emotion that wasn't his, his own voice in a language he didn't speak, and then he saw that blond girl again.  She looked at him but didn't seem to see him, just the thing inside of him.

That was the girl he'd saved.

Then he was swallowed into blackness again.  A hollow, earthy darkness that quickly turned to nothing at all.

  
\----------  
  


"C'mon, wakey wakey," Dean says to the unconscious man that Castiel had carried into what passed for the infirmary in the Men of Letters bunker.  Following Arakiel’s departure with their little blond coed, the only thing that they could think of to do was get the broad-shouldered, giant of a man out of the snow.

Jacob jerks back at the sharp, acrid tang of the little vial that the hunter is irritably waving under his nose.  His head hurts and the lights all seem too bright.  There is something about it that reminds him of a hospital, but it’s more like a hospital out of an old movie than any place in Missouri.  He momentarily wonders if he’s somehow gone back in time or been transported to the set of a horror movie. 

“What the hell,” he groans, mashing the heel of his palm up against the side of his nose.

His entire body aches as though he ran a marathon without stretching first; the muscles feel tired and slightly burned out.  Like sunburn on the inside. He feels lethargic, like he is trying to move his heavy arms through syrup rather than air.  More than anything, he is aware of how empty he feels; he only vaguely remembers the power that had been rushing through the circuit of his veins, but already he feels hollow without it.

His warm brown eyes light on Castiel, who is watching cautiously from the doorway.  It sparks a flicker of a memory - Castiel the angel.  Archangel.  The one with all of the wings and heads and majesty, even though his angular face looks weary now.  He has a hard time assembling a coherent image of the creature he has seen him as, and can instead only recall keywords and flashes of specific details.

“Castiel?” he asks uncertainly.  If that is the man’s name, he won’t chalk up the experience to an extended hallucination.

The angel inclines his chin slightly, cocking his head to the side, “Yes?”

With that confirmation,  Jacob settles back against the pillows and exhales hard from the very bottom of his lungs.  Arakiel has left him.  He’s taken the girl again and left him on his own.  The only thing that makes anything all right is that he knows that the girl is safe; nothing could hurt her when that angel was inside of her.

“So it was real,” he murmurs tiredly.

“Yes.”

“And you’re an angel?” Jacob asks, feeling crazy saying it aloud.

“Yes.”

“With a bunch of heads and wings and a big… I dunno, crazy grow in your chest?”

“Yes.”

Dean bristles slightly at the thought that this newcomer - some dumbass who had Lucifer’s freaking boyfriend piloting his meatsuit - had seen his angel’s true form.  It’s a bit of a sensitive topic for him at the moment; even though he rationally knows that this guy has no idea, he can’t help but think that the universe is rubbing it in his face that he can’t remember what Cas looked like when he sprung him from the pit. 

It makes him grit his teeth, but he asks very politely, civilly, ““How’d you get mixed up in this?”

Jacob is a little bit uncertain on that point.  He remembers saying yes to helping someone save someone, but he hadn’t really understood the rhetoric.  He hadn’t really understood that it meant that something else was going to walk around in his body.  It isn’t like he was upset about it, not exactly - there is something addictively calm about the whole experience - but he can’t help but feel confused about where that leaves him now.

“I don’t really know.  An angel asked if I would help him save a wounded girl and I said yes,” he says finally, “I don’t really remember much of anything after that.”

He slips his hand into his pocket and fishes out his phone to find it is dead, “Anyone got an iPhone charger?”

Sam looks at him curiously.  An iPhone charger is not the first thing he’d have asked for, coming out of an angelic possession.  In fairness, he doesn’t remember what was - maybe water?  What the hell had he wanted after Gadreel had left his vessel for Dean’s?  He barely remembers anything except being very angry with the angel, very worried about Cas, and very disappointed in his brother for making yet another stupid sacrifice.  First thing he’d wanted was for Gadreel to take up residence again and give his brother back.

Maybe he isn’t really in a place to judge “normal.”

“Ah, yeah.  Yeah, I’ll grab it for you in just a sec,” Sam answers, nodding slowly. 

“Thanks, man,” Jacob says, easing tiredly against the raised back of the bed, “And could I trouble you for some water, maybe something to eat?  I dunno when I last ate.  What time is it?”

“It’s about 1,” Sam replies, glancing down at the screen of his own phone.

“PM or AM?”

“AM,”  Dean supplies.  He looks critically at the younger man and then adds, “On Thursday, February 20th, 2014.”

Jacob blinks slowly at him, wondering at the passage of time.  It had only felt like a few hours to him, really, but it had been several days.  Close to a week.  No wonder his phone was dead - it was probably jammed with texts and phone messages, too.  Emails.  Emails from clients.  Dammit, he had missed one of his deadlines. 

“Fuck,” he groans, closing his eyes.

“And you’re in Lebanon, Kansas,” Dean says finally.

Jacob groans wordlessly, louder.

“So, ah, yeah.  Look, if you need help getting home, wherever home is for you, yeah, we can help you with that.  But so y’know, that angel might come back for you.”

“Arakiel will certainly come back for him,” Castiel says from the doorway.  He ventures into the room to give the newcomer a glass of water and one of Charlie’s 100 calorie packets of goldfish crackers that he had retrieved from the pantry.

Neither of the hunters had even noticed that he was gone.

Jacob takes them and eagerly drains the cup. He feels like he hasn’t had anything to drink in days and realizes that it is possible that he hasn't. He tears open the package and pops one of the crispy little fish-shaped crackers into his mouth gratefully, watching Castiel intently as though he’d suddenly sprout wings and fly away.

“That bad?  What’s he want?”

“You are what is referred to as a ‘vessel,’” Cas explains patiently, standing beside the bed, “It means that an angel can inhabit your body if you allow it to.  You are a very strong vessel, which means that you can contain a very strong angel without… ah, exploding.”

Jacob’s broad, dark eyebrows flicked up expressively at Castiel’s word choice. 

“And Arakiel’s a strong angel?”

“Very,” Cas confirms, nodding.

“But he’s got that girl.  What’s he want me for?”

“Arakiel is very strong.  Too strong for either you or his other vessel to contain indefinitely.  He therefore needs to switch between the two of you.  She obviously consents to his possession of her, and I believe he assumes that you would give your consent again.”

“I dunno about that,” he says, shaking his head as he tries not to just inhale the entire bag of goldfish.  He hasn’t had them since he was little enough for his mom to pack them in his lunch for school and he had forgotten how frankly awesome they were.  He doesn’t think that the flavor in any way resembles cheddar - more like salt and food coloring with enough flour to hold it all together - but it is exactly what he wants at that moment.

“Your discussion with Arakiel on that point may not be entirely enjoya-”

“Hey,” Charlie says, popping her head in the doorway, “Hey. Sorry to interrupt - and hey, welcome back - but thought I’d tell you, a bunch of lights just went out on the map.  In Texas.”

“Like… Malachi’s group of lights?” Dean asks.

“Yeah.  Like… a lot of them.  Bunch scattered, too.  But like… something big just took out a bunch of angels.  I need to check the data we recorded, but I think like 10 dropped,” she says.  She looks over the newcomer, wondering where he came from and who he is.  She had been down in the den, binge watching Orange is the New Black, when the brothers pulled up in front of the bunker a half hour ago and had therefore missed the whole angelic death match.

“You want something more substantial than that?” she asks, “I can make you a sandwich or something.”

"That'd be awesome," Jacob replies, flashing her a broad, bright white smile, "I mean, if you don't mind."

Dean nods quickly in acknowledgment, clapping their guest on the shoulder as he walks back to the doorway to meet Charlie, “Never thought I’d see you offering to make a dude a sandwich.  Ha, okay.  Yeah, you got that.  Anyone still blinking in Texas?  Like, do we gotta check it out?”

“It’s Arakiel,” Castiel says, shaking his head as he trailed after Dean, “There’s no reason for you to go and I would prefer that you did not.”

Dean glances over at him just a little bit irritably.  While Cas is being spared full-on grump mode by the fact that he is still just a bit lovey-dovey over the angel, he is overtired, overwhelmed, and frustrated because he still feels inadequately informed about the Arakiel situation.  He rationally realizes that Castiel isn’t keeping information from them and just hasn’t had proper opportunity to expand on his brief summary of their conversation; however, at the moment he is too weary to parse much beyond his annoyance.

“So we’re just supposed to let that guy - girl now, I guess - try to kill us, then run off to kill a ton of other people?”

“Angels,” Castiel amends calmly, “And yes.  Malachi sent him to mislead me into thinking you and Sam had been targeted by Bartholomew, knowing I would have killed him and the opposition for it.  It's impossible to think that he hadn't realized that there would be a consequence if he found out… and I can therefore only feel limited sorrow for his predicament.”

Dean blinks slowly at him, wondering if Castiel is actually so detached about the deaths of his siblings.  He understands that his lover is different now, both from everything that has happened and because of his transformation into an archangel.  Even so, the cool words seem somewhat out of character for his long-time companion.

“Yeah… okay.  Okay, we won’t go,” he says uncertainly, glancing at Sam. “Charlie, you wanna get this guy a room after you give’m some grub?”

He pauses, then shakes his head and holds his hand out to their guest, “By the way, I’m Dean.  This’s Sam.  You know Cas.”

Jacob shakes his hand hesitantly, then more firmly; to his surprise, the contact is grounding and real.  It’s something that he needs after what happened and he holds Dean’s hand for a half-second longer than he intends to.

“Jacob.  Mueller.  From St. Louis."

Dean pulls his hand back, nodding, “Cool.  Well, Sam’n me need to get some sleep - drove in from Massachusetts just now and we’re beat.  You just … I dunno.  Putter around here and try not to do anything too weird or evil or angelic or anything.  Get some sleep and we can figure shit out in the morning.”

He rubs tiredly at the bridge of his nose, knowing that wasn't the most coherent thing he’d ever said to someone.  Still, the fact that neither he nor Sam had crashed the Impala is a testament to the power of caffeine and the strength of the human spirit. Briefly pinching the bridge of his nose, he says, “I’ve had more’n enough of this bullshit.  I’m gonna go catch some sleep.”

Charlie smirks at him, “Yeah, okay.  You do that.”

"Do me a favor and text Garth and tell him to get someone out to grab any angel blades they can find."

"Yeah, got it boss."

And then Dean is gone, and seconds later Cas follows though no one really sees him leave. 

Sam, left behind with Charlie and Arakiel’s vacated vessel, suddenly realizes how tired he is.  He is also aware that save for a kiss on arrival, he has seen very little of Gadreel; knowing the former angel, he is patiently waiting for him in the hallway.  He can think of nothing more inviting than dragging him to him room for a bit of light petting and a full night's sleep on a soft horizontal surface that was actually long enough for his body.  He nods to the other two and says, “Me too.  Charlie, I know you'll be up for a bit, could you wake me up if anything important happens, okay?”

“Yep.  We’re good, Sam.”

She sometimes wonders why the two of them feel as though they have to personally handle every situation; everyone at the bunker is reasonably competent with the whole hunting and/or Men of Letters thing.  It also isn’t exactly like there aren’t any other hunters in their network of acquaintances; sure, the population had dropped in the last few years, what with the Witnesses thing and then Abaddon’s recent crusade, but there were new hunters picking up silver blades and stuffing themselves into flannel overshirts all the time.  As long as nasty things were killing people, there would be people killing them back.

She’s glad they’re both relaxed enough to leave the world to babysit itself for a few hours, but she had selfishly hoped that one of them would stick around for a bit before crashing.  She needs to talk to someone about something personal; she'd have preferred her almost-bro Dean, but would not have turned down the more sensitive younger sibling either.  Still, it can wait - the issue’s settled already, so it’s not like she's waiting on advice.  It's more that she needs someone who will just sit and listen, interjecting go-get-'em encouragements and righteous agreements while she rants.  That's how friendship (and she assumes _family_ ) works.

Sighing, she looks to Jacob and asks, "You okay to walk around?  If so, you can come keep me company in the kitchen."  
  


\------  
  


"I felt their lights go out," Abaddon comments as she looks over the shapely silhouette of Arakiel's vessel. 

The angel is still, looking over the corpses of angelic siblings that she has just struck down.  It was a short battle, hardly what she would consider a battle at all.  There is blood on her sword and fingers, but not a drop on her clothes.  Even old, worn, and atrophied, she is the penultimate soldier; she dislikes inefficiency and she dislikes mess.

Her vessel’s expression is outwardly blank, and goes more neutral in the presence of the demon.  She is making such an effort to disconnect her emotions from being translated to her physical body that her features are almost slack, momentarily corpselike, but Abaddon can see her true form; she knows the sag of her partially-mended wings and the nuanced changes in her heavenly body that indicate an introspective sorrow.

"I knew it would be you," Abaddon added.

Arakiel turns toward her, her blade lifted defensively but her posture indicating that she doesn’t anticipate a fight.

"Malachi betrayed me."

"I don't need an explanation.  I know your heart; we were friends, once," she purrs, moving closer.

Arakiel's eyes move over her human exterior - Abaddon’s skin looks bloodless and is powdered paler in contrast with her deeply rouged, almost black lips.  It makes her eyes look like black marbles, framed with thick eyelashes and set into a paper-white face. Despite the dark circles beneath her slightly sunken eyes, she is stunningly beautiful.

Behind that, her demonic face is a horrific array of eyes, teeth, and horns.  There is smoke and fire, crimson like her hair and black like the darkest corners of Hell.  It doesn't scare Arakiel exactly, though she retreats step for step as Abaddon winds her way closer.

"You were an angel once," Arakiel counters.

"Once.  And you were almost a knight of hell," Abaddon says amicably,  "It isn't too late."

The angel brushes it off easily, not even pausing long enough to give the polite impression that she had considered Abaddon's words.

"What happened to you? I can see your wretched face at times even through my vessel's mortal eyes."

Abaddon laughed, "Oh, isn't that just the talk of the whole damned town.  I could ask you who prettied you up since I last saw you."

She looks over the blond vessel almost lasciviously, but the question references Arakiel's true form; it's impossible not to notice that her wings are much more densely feathered and that there is new growth in the previously broken flight feathers.  More, the way that the angel holds her body, coupled with the fact that she didn't take flight at her arrival, tells Abaddon that Arakiel's health has significantly improved.

Arakiel, in a moment of unusual openness, nods to the bodies on the ground.

"I let the medics go if they didn't fight me," she said by way of explanation, "I'm not ungrateful."

"That's certainly sporting," Abaddon muses.  There's a gorgeous, lilting quality to her voice that comes through in even her demonic register.

Arakiel shrugs, "Are we going to fight?"

"Mm, it depends.  Have you reconsidered joining me?"

"No."

"Even though your own kind will offer you no protection or mercy?  I mean, come on, darling brother, you need to think of your future.  Eternity is a long time to run."

Arakiel considers it for a moment longer this time, cocking her blond head to the side.

"I still have options."

The demon nods thoughtfully, then says, "I'll tell you what.  I will make you a one-time offer and give you one short-term truce."

She doesn't wait for Arakiel's response; she knows that the angel is listening. 

"I want the gates of Hell reopened - I want my army, and I want my half-fallen angels.  I'm sure you hear them, rattling the earth and trying to get free.  The Winchesters have a prophet who has translated the demon tablet, and I'm certain that the information that I need is there."

"The option I'm offering you is this - help me, be my wings and my sword.  After I have turned my angels - all of whom have pledged their grace - to knights, I will make you my queen.  The two of us will rule the world together."

The angel inclines her chin slightly, "I won't join you; I would never fall to serve you.  There is only one who I would still serve."

"But I serve him, even now.  In whose name do you think my army fights?"

Arakiel spares her a withering look.

"Certainly not mine!  But there are things that must be done before our lord and master is ready to take his burning throne at the summit of the world."

The angel smirks, "You're full of shit."

"Think about it.  Think about your life, your safety.  What is one archangel to eight knights of hell?  We can protect you," Abaddon offers silkily.

"I've listened to you long enough," Arakiel tells her.

With a rustle of deep violet wings, the ancient angel is gone, leaving the mutilated demon by herself, considering the wings burned onto the ground beneath Arakiel's victims.  


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry for the long lapse in updating - real life got very busy, and then I hit a serious writing block. This fic is a little harder because it doesn't have the structure of a hunt, which makes it a bit hard to keep driving the plot forward. But there are a lot of good plotty things in this fic though, some of which are important to the overall "season" plot. Anyway, I think I've got a better handle on where this fic is going, so the updates should be consistent again! Hopefully I'll be back to weekly or bi-weekly updates of around 5-10,000 words. :) Thanks for your patience!
> 
> Also, I am looking for a beta reader to help me edit. If you're interested, please feel free to email me at doubleohawesome@yahoo.com.

Sam still isn’t completely used to waking up beside another man.  It’s owed in part to the fact that the relationship with Gadreel, a least as far as it relates to being in separate bodies, is only a month and half old.  Enough of that time has been spent apart that he is still not used to the weight of another body counterbalancing the mattress.  He is therefore surprised to slowly surface from sleep to find himself draped across the blond as he reads the news on his smartphone.  
  
"Hey," he murmurs groggily, shifting slightly closer.  He can feel that he has had his cheek pressed firmly to Gadreel's shoulder for too long, and that the weave of the former angel's henley has embossed raised pattern his cheek.  
  
He lifts his head and rubs the back of his hand against his face, smirking at the strangely corrugated texture of his skin.    
  
"Hey," the blond replies, setting the phone aside to give Sam his full attention.  
  
He leans close to kiss him lightly then asks quietly, his own voice gravelly, "How did you sleep?"  
  
"Not sure yet," Sam admits with a quiet laugh, "I think good. You?"  
  
"Fairly well," he replies, nodding and cuddling up to his still-groggy lover..    
  
He likes mornings when he can wake up with Sam.  There haven’t been nearly as many as he’d like, but he already has a particular way that he likes for them to go.  He likes to wake up first, but pretend to himself that he’s still asleep so that he can soak in the warmth for a few more minutes without feeling any responsibility to move.  As he surfaces from half-sleep, he likes to insinuate himself closer, tucking himself snugly along Sam’s front and getting rid of any of the gaps between their bodies.  From there, he likes to carefully reach for his phone so he can read the news, then just relax while feeling Sam’s chest rising and falling with his steady breaths.  He recognizes that it verges on sentimental, but he is always willing to stay in bed, particularly knowing how affectionate the hunter can be first thing in the morning.  
  
Sam cuddles Gadreel comfortably, nuzzling his jaw with his lips.  The blond can feel Sam's half-hard prick pressed against his leg, but tries to ignore it; Sam had explained to him that it didn't necessarily mean anything, it just happened in the morning to a lot of guys.  All the same, having Sam warm and pliant at his side reminds him of what they did in Oklahoma, which makes his mind wander.  
  
He is surprised by how eagerly he has taken to physical affection; he hadn’t had any curiosity about it as an angel, but now he feels like he is always waiting for the next time that Sam will kiss him or wondering if the casual brush of their bodies would turn into more.  While he told Sam before that he would be satisfied just being his companion, the times that his lover has given him more have left him in a perpetual state of hope.  Just as Castiel is jealous of the open affection that he and Sam share, he is jealous of the obvious, spark-like physical intensity between Dean and his archangel.  
  
He sighs comfortably, pressing a kiss to the round of Sam’s shoulder before moving in to kiss him lightly on the mouth.    
  
“I find that I sleep more evenly when you’re here,” Gadreel muses, smiling when Sam leans in to kiss him back.    
  
They’ve talked before about Gadreel’s mixed feelings on sleep; after being awake for a few million years, shutting off the lights sometimes feels like death.  Sometimes it reminds him of the cold, claustrophobia of his imprisonment.  There are nights that it scares him, and he stays up as long as he can to avoid the transitional state between waking and dreaming.  He trusts sleep more when he is with Sam, who acts as his light in the dark.    
  
“Yeah, I know,” Sam says, searching for his hand under the covers and giving it a light squeeze.  
  
Gadreel holds his hand, smiling at the small gesture.  He lifts his lover’s hand to his mouth and presses a warm kiss to his knuckles.  Sam closes his eyes at the light contact, squeezing his hand again, before leaning in to kiss him more firmly on the mouth.    
  
The blond tugs him closer, wanting to feel the heat of Sam’s body pressing up against his own as he pushes for a deeper kiss.  He missed Sam, everything about him, and he wants to keep him in bed longer.  He wants to twine his arms around him and hold him forever in the safety of this room.  He never realizes how much he worries about his lover until he returns home safe again.  Of course, he frets while he’s away; however, the panic of _this could never come again_ can only fully settle in once Sam is safely tucked into his arms.  He draws a shaky breath before claiming another kiss.  
  
Sam releases his hand and strokes his fingers over the soft, clean material of hisundershirt.  He feels the brush of Gadreel’s stubble against his jaw and it gives him the same little prickle of anxious excitement as always; though he has accepted his attraction to him and never forgets that he is male, there are times when he is acutely aware of how big of an exception the blond angel is for him.  
  
He can feel that his lover wants him by the inviting shift in his body, how Gadreel arches into every point of contact.  The unguarded desire doesn't scare him anymore; the more time that he's away, the more he realizes that he needs the blond, and the more he wants his strong, broad shouldered body.  When they're apart, he often finds himself thinking about his hands on his skin.  His mouth pressing kisses to his neck and shoulders, his tongue tracing the lines of his body.  Sometimes his fantasies surprise him; this last time, he resolved to act on his desires, but he still feels nervous about making the move.  
  
After a moment, the kissing turns more heated and he pulls away.  
  
“We should probably get up,” he murmurs.  
  
Gadreel doesn’t argue.  He tries very hard to mask any disappointment that he might feel about the fact that Sam is just not as clingy as he is; no matter what he may want for the two of them, his most beloved simply doesn’t seem to need him as much as he needs him.  The knowledge, combined with his desperation for his affection, makes him feel vaguely pathetic.  He nods slowly, though he doesn’t move to get up.    
  
The hunter smiles at him warmly, leaning in close to rest his forehead against Gadreel’s, “I’ve got something I wanted to look into today.”  
  
“Oh?”  Gadreel asks mellowly, his fingers seeking Sam’s under the covers again.  
  
“Mm-hm.  Something I want to try to find out more about.  Something that would make a great present for you if it works out.”  
  
The former angel smiles at that, lacing his fingers between Sam’s before lifting his hand to his lips and pressing a kiss to his first knuckle.  He meets his beloved’s eyes, liking the idea of a gift.  He isn’t materialistic, but he likes the gesture.  He likes that Sam would want to give him something, though he doesn’t really care what it is.  He likes the idea of something tangible that he can hold while Sam is away.  
  
“That’s very generous of you, beloved."  
  
“Well, don’t thank me yet, I don’t know if it’ll work.”  
  
Sam kisses his jaw, then sits up.  He silently berates himself for not having the nerve to get sexy with his obviously willing boyfriend, then tugs his shirt down a bit and sets it to rights.  
  
“I appreciate the thought regardless,” Gadreel tells him, sitting up as well.  Without another word, he slides out from under the blankets and gently, silently eases himself to his feet.  There is a beauty to his style of movement; the smooth, soundless grace of his strong limbs lends him a cat-like quality.  As he stretches his arms over his head, Sam admires how the muscles in his back move beneath his thin henley.    
  
Without any sense of modesty whatsoever, Gadreel strips out of his bedclothes entirely, leaving him completely nude.  Sam’s eyes move lower to take in his bare backside and his strong thighs, thinking that maybe he _does_ have the moxy to toss him back into bed and roll him up onto his hands and knees and grind him into the sheets.   Just as abruptly, though, the blond is slipping into his boxers, then jeans.  Sam licks his lips, then throws his legs over the edge of the bed and stands up to greet the day.  In his indecision, he’d missed the moment.  
  
“You’re really…”  he doesn’t have a word that immediately seems appropriate.  Gorgeous?  Beautiful?  Hot?  Sexy?  Gorgeous.  But men aren’t really gorgeous, not usually.  Sam feels like he should be able to come up with a better descriptor.  
  
In the slight pause, Gadreel looks over at him with an expectant eyebrow lifted.  
  
“Perfect,” Sam finishes a little lamely.  
  
The blond relaxes, smiling, and pulls on a t-shirt.  
  
“Not in the slightest, but I’m flattered that you think so,” he replies, rounding back to slide his arms around Sam’s waist.  He leans up to kiss him casually, sweetly.    
  
“Just accept the compliment, you brat,” Sam laughs, pulling him closer and holding him there.  He kisses him quickly, and then again more firmly.  
  
“But Sam, I have perceived perfection.  Actual perfection.”  
  
“I haven’t, so you’re what I imagine it to be,” the hunter tells him with a grin.  It’s the sort of line that would make Dean gag theatrically and stagger around, but it comes naturally when he’s talking to Gadreel.    
  
The statement catches his lover by surprise.  His mouth twists thoughtfully, betraying that he is oddly moved, and he looks away briefly.  His gaze lingers on the rumpled duvet for a moment longer before he finally looks back to Sam.  Smiling, he murmurs, “I love you, Sam.”  
  
The hunter catches his strong, square jaw and in both hands and drags him close to kiss him hard, suddenly overwhelmed by adoration.  Gadreel yields against him, almost going weak in the knees at the exuberant show of affection; it’s what he wanted, what he’s needed since his lover got back.  He grips handfuls of Sam’s t-shirt, pulling him closer as he kisses him back eagerly.  
  
Sam pulls back just enough to breathe, then tells him earnestly, “I love you too.”  
  
Gadreel smiles warmly, sliding his fingertips up into Sam’s long, soft hair.  He leans against his companion, enjoying the warmth of his body against his own.  He licks his lips uncertainly, stalling for a moment while he works to get up the nerve to ask for more.  The adrenaline blooms pointlessly in his chest as he silently strings together various combinations of words to express his need for the man before him.  He can feel the perfect moments passing over and over, and he can hear himself taking short breaths, the sort one takes before speaking.  However, he can’t bring himself to ask Sam to keep kissing him and he doesn’t have the nerve to offer to pleasure him.  
  
Sam keeps him close for a moment longer, mentally running through the same questions and offers.  He finally kisses him lightly again, lingering close to nuzzle his lips against the other man’s.  
  
The ground beneath them suddenly lurches and shudders.  Gadreel reflexively grabs on to Sam and holds close to him, setting his feet slightly wider to maintain his balance as the floor quakes hard with one of the many tremors that have been shaking the bunker for the last few weeks.  
  
Gadreel is always surprised by how they set his heart racing; bound to the Earth as he is now, he feels unsettled and actually frightened by the unnatural movements of the ground.  He dislikes the sharp, fierce rattle as everything in the bunker vibrates against everything else, and he finds the almost gelatinous wiggle of walls disconcerting.  He is stoic and keeps his internalized panic from showing on his strong, sharp features, but his fingers in the folds of Sam’s t-shirt are tight as he presses himself up against him.  
  
The hunter isn’t used to earthquakes anymore and finds them unsettling, but experienced a handful of them while he lived in California during college; they don't scare him the way way they scare Gadreel.  He steadies his lover until the ground beneath them settles and stills with only a few faint tremors rippling through as aftershocks.  
  
“I hate that,” Gadreel says quietly, not loosening his hold.  
  
“That really freaks you out, huh?”  
  
“It would be disconcerting under normal circumstances, but knowing that it’s an angel thrashing about in Hell makes it a thousand times worse,” he replies matter-of-factly, not wanting to address the fact that Sam is right about his fear.  
  
The taller man pulls back and looks at him thoughtfully, lightly rubbing the back of his shoulder, then kisses his forehead, “That’s true.  It is an end of times reminder, I guess.  As though anyone could forget.”  
  
Gadreel nods, sighing, then releases his grip on Sam’s shirt.  His hands move a bit fitfully for a moment before he slips them into the pockets of his jeans to still them.  Biting the inside of his lip, he regards Sam thoughtfully, “Do you think it will end this time?”  
  
The hunter pauses, wondering how many times he will have to reassure people that things will be all right; lately it seems like everyone new he meets looks to him for some sort of reassurance, as though he is the authority.  He is always able to come up with some platitude or pithy bit of optimism, even when he doesn’t believe it.  But then, he could probably have an angel blade pressed against his throat and still tell someone that everything was going to be fine.  
  
Even so, it seems disingenuous to say something like that to Gadreel.  It seems strange that someone so inconceivably old would want reassurances from him; with that in mind, he realizes that it isn’t what he wants and that Gadreel is simply asking his opinion.  More than that, he doesn’t want to hide the fact that he’s tired, apocalypse-weary, from the person whom he loves most.  
  
“I don’t know,” he admits.  
  
Gadreel nods as though he expected that answer, then responds calmly, “I think it will be all right.  You and your brother have never failed to save humanity before, and our family is stronger now.”  
  
The words warm him, seaming together a torn edge somewhere deep inside him. Our family.  How long had it been since someone had given him a kind word, beyond a battlefield pep-talk? And when had Gadreel started naturally including himself in their family?  Gadreel’s calm certainty gives the statement a certain credulity and that makes Sam feel strangely calm.  
  
He smiles and kisses him, “I know.  And we’ve got you now.  That’ll make a difference.”  
  
Gadreel’s faint smile falters, “I don’t know-”  
  
“It makes a difference to me,” Sam tells him firmly, squeezing him again before pulling away, “I need to go bother Cas a bit.  Catch you later for lunch, all right?  
  
The blond is surprised again by Sam’s vehemence, but it makes him happy.  The change in expression is subtle, the sort of thing that a stranger might not even notice, but the hunter feels his heart skip.  He ducks his head almost shyly when Gadreel gives him an eloquent little smile.

  
  
\----------------------------

  
  
Arakiel puts distance between herself and Abaddon, her long, burning violet wings carrying her in bursts of speed across the galaxy.  There’s no friction in the airless void, despite that she remains in a corporeal form; she darts between planets and skims across the surfaces of stars.    
  
Settling into bottom of a blackened sea on a planet that man would never discover, she looks up through the almost-frozen water to regard the black and violet sky, studded with stars and wreathed in the soft, translucent colors of distant nebulae. It’s beautiful, a work of God.    
  
More than that, it is a work that God didn’t intend for men.  It is a private amusement, an artists’ experimentation.  A playful wash of color and a deep, black ocean that he intended only for his own eyes of his angels, his beloved first children.  Their family.  She feels a swell of affection for her father and for her siblings, an exclusionary adoration that wraps her in a comfortable warmth that she hasn’t felt in a long time.  
  
She remembers the time before man, before God turned his attention away from his earlier creations.  She remembers Lucifer, her most beloved, the archangel who sat a little ways off and watched while their father fashioned everything from nothing.  He painted sunsets and twisted and pinched mountains from the smooth billiard-board surfaces of unnamed planets.  
  
 _He’s making them for himself, but he’s also making them for us._  
  
She remembers his golden wonder, his adoration, and his love.  Lucifer loved God and loved his family, and loved his father's creations.  He was fiercely proud of all of them, which validated all of them.  They were all somehow worth more because Lucifer loved them, as though he was reflecting God's love and multiplying it a million times.  The lightbringer, the morning star.    
  
That pride became an issue when it became inconvenient - at least that was how Arakiel had seen it.  When God created man, an inferior, petty little creature and elected him favorite, Lucifer's pride had turned to jealousy.  He would not bow to man, and for that their father had locked him away.    
  
Arakiel thought _that_ had been their father's pride; it had nothing to do with man and everything to do with the fact that his best and brightest wouldn't obey him.  To Arakiel and a certain group of angels, man had been a test of obedience rather than a favored creation; the fact that their father would lock away a favored son over pride, forgetting everything else, shattered the idea of God's unconditional love. For the first time, they questioned.  
  
And that was God's fault, not Lucifer's.  Never the morning star, whom Arakaiel loved even before God.  
  
So she fell for him, followed his example.  Abaddon had been her ally then, a bright star herself with radiant red wings that bled the colors of the sunset to dusky blackened tips.  She was intelligent and loyal, and Arakiel loved her as well.    
  
Arakiel hadn't seen her after she cut out her grace and replaced it with a twisted human soul.  She can't reconcile the sharp-toothed, black- winged demonic terror that has offered her an alliance with the angel she had known before.  She wonders now what her own face would have become if she fell, and if her lover and master could have still loved her.  Touching her smooth, unlined mortal face, she wonders how her vessel would react to housing a twisted angel.  Not that it would matter; demons don't require consent.  
  
The loneliness of her exile washes over her again in the face of how much has changed, now colored by the permanence of her loss; Abaddon as she once knew her is gone and her most beloved is locked away for eternity.    
  
Arakiel feels a faint stirring deep in the core of her, the shift of Allison's soul restlessly shifting in its forced sleep.  She feels Allison's memories as clearly as her own, the privileged, quiet upbringing with distant parents who gave her little affirmation or direction.  She was a child without limits, but also without purpose; Arakiel feels the devotion warm within her and knows that this vessel loves her in a strange, selfish way.  
  
 _Allison, can I show you something?_ she offers, waking her consciousness just enough to converse without words.  
  
The response is a sleepy affirmation, and Arakiel allows the vessel's native consciousness to surface enough to perceive the alien landscape.  There is a second of fear, but it is quickly replaced by wonder as Arakiel's strong wings lift them above the surface of the water.  
  
 _Where are we?_  
  
 _Someplace that God never intended for the eye of man_  
  
Arakiel can feel her pride and wonder, and beneath that she feels a swell of affection for the angel.  Love.  Arakiel is surprised by the emotion; it feels different to her than her own feelings ever have.  There's a purity to it, as well as a depth that she doesn't think that her expansive consciousness can mimic.  
  
She is strangely moved, but she does not allow her own emotions to transfer to Allison's perception.  Their bond remains one-sided, as it should be with any angel and its vessel.  
  
 _Thank you for showing me._  
  
Arakiel nods, moving Allison's fair head with the gesture.    
  
 _It's my pleasure._  
  
She realizes that she wanted to share this sight with the human soul within her, only in part to spite her creator.  She is lonely, despite that she is too proud to call herself that.  "Solitary," she prefers. Alone by choice, which she would argue isn’t lonely at all.  
  
They linger for a moment longer before Arakiel resumes control and pushes Allison’s consciousness back under, gently wrapping her in her grace.  There was still no transference; everything remains as it was and Allison knows no more than she did before, save that there is a planet somewhere with a sky with colors like an oil slick.

  
  
\------------------------------

  
  
Dean isn’t pleased about just _letting_ Arakiel slaughter angels in Texas, but he logically knows that her doing so is both deserved and convenient.  The fact that Castiel had basically forbid him to go nettles him as well, making him want to hop right into the Impala and take off for the compound; he has never been good at doing what people told him to do, unless those people were his father.  It goes against every instinct to just let the angel to put him to bed, but he slips below the blankets and sleeps hard until morning.  
  
He wakes to find the angel is no longer beside him.  He’d never say so, but waking alone when he went to bed in company always rouses a bit of petulant annoyance, as though it’s some kind of cruel abandonment.  He stays in bed pretending to be asleep for an extra fifteen minutes before grudgingly rolling out out from under the comforter and stomping heavily to the adjoining bathroom to take a piss and brush his teeth.  
  
As he stares down his reflection, he mulls over the items on his to-do list.  He already texted a couple of hunters to go in and collect any angel blades that they could find on-premises, so there was nothing else about that situation that actually required their attention.  That left them free for the moment to deal with Arakiel’s discarded vessel, figure out how to kill Abaddon, and formulate an actual plan to tackle the whole "getting the angels out of hell" problem.  
  
He doesn’t want to do anything.  After their unpleasant adventure in Milford, he wants to take a few days to do nothing at all; it feels like they never have downtime anymore.  There was a time when he and his brother would make random trips to interesting places or kitschy landmarks just for fun; he’s got Polaroids stashed under the mat in the trunk to prove it.  At the moment he doesn’t feel like going anywhere, though.  Maybe just watch some shitty movies, sleep, work out, cook some real food, and bone the resident archangel.    
  
The archangel in question appears behind him in the bathroom mirror’s reflection, startling him into spraying a mouthful of toothpaste across the glass.  Scowling, he irritably scrubs at the foam with the palm of his hand.  
  
“For fuck’s sake, Cas, you don’t just pop in on a guy when he’s in the fucking bathroom.”  
  
“The door was open,” he points out calmly, glancing over his shoulder at the open door as it to verify his statement, “I didn’t think you’d mind.”  
  
“Yeah, well, I mind,” Dean replies testily before rinsing his mouth.    
  
He turns around to face his lover and nearly knocks into him.  _Objects in mirror are closer than they appear_ , he thinks drily, smirking to himself in amusement.  Shit like that always entertains him.  
  
Cas doesn’t move, though, and the hunter nearly mashes himself up against his sturdy body.  
  
“Why the hell are you so close?”  
  
“You’re in a bad mood,” the angel observes.  
  
“What, no,” he huffs, too stubborn to step back.  Instead, he stays awkwardly, almost uncomfortably close to the shorter, immoveable archangel.  The proximity rejuvenates his flagging morning wood, which simultaneously makes him feel awkwardly defensive and gives him a slightly more optimistic perception of Castiel’s sudden appearance.  Maybe he could rearrange the to-do list and move 'nailing the archangel' to numero uno on the priorities.  
  
He slips his arms around the angel’s waist and snugs him comfortably up against his front, kissing the spar of his cheekbone.  He reflects that he doesn't actually have a _reason_ to be irritated with Cas - he just woke up a bit surly and he is taking it out on him.  Really, he is pretty damn pleased to have his trenchcoat-enrobed bedmate back in his arms.  
  
“I wanted to talk to you about something before I presented it to Sam,” Cas tells him, turning his head and tilting his chin up to kiss Dean’s mouth.  
  
Unfortunately, the mention of his little brother is the equivalent of a cold shower.  He groans and pulls back, smoothing his hand down modestly over the front of his boxers to try to discourage his lazy erection.  
  
“Yeah? What’sat?”  
  
Cas can tell that Dean is displeased about something, but he doesn't immediately know what.  He blinks at him slowly, his bright blue eyes flicking down to his tented shorts before looping back up to his face. Realization dawns on him instantly.  
  
“We can talk about it later,” he offers hopefully.  
  
“Nah, nah.  Tell me now.  What’s up?” Dean asks gruffly, waving him off as he brushes past him to the bedroom.  _Y'always catch on a bit too late, feathers._  
  
Cas trails after him and says, "Well, Sam wanted to know if it was possible to extract the grace lingering in the two of you."  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"There is, and I found the tool necessary to do it," he continues, "Down in storage."  
  
"I think I remember you saying it's painful."  
  
"It would be."  
  
"Dangerous?"  
  
"Potentially," Cas affirms, raising his eyebrows.  
  
He watches as Dean tugs on a battered pair of blue jeans, noting the unusual curve of the hunter's legs as he always does.  His quick, intelligent blue eyes assess the tension of his shoulders and the smooth quality of his movements as his inhuman brain hums through the possible interpretations of the verbal pause.  
  
"What kinda dangerous?" Dean finally asks.  
  
"Soul injury or death."  
  
"Soul death?"  
  
"Just death.  Death-death."  
  
“But you can snap your fingers and just mojo that away.”  
  
“Yes.  Soul injury is the greater concern.”  
  
 The hunter makes a non-committal sound as he slips a worn black t-shirt over his head, not really certain what “soul injury” involves.  He doesn’t want to think about it, so he lets his thoughts flick appreciatively to the texture of his shirt.  He's had this one for ages, so long that the battered design has cracked and faded.  Every time he washes it, it loses a bit more of its screening; the only reason that it still fits him is because it stretched with his broadening shoulders and was worn soft and thin through hundreds of washings.  
  
There is a nuanced, subconscious language of t-shirts with Dean, though only Sam has picked up on even the basics; he knows to be a bit kinder when he wears his faded Zepplin shirt, and he knows enough to get the hell out of the way if Metallica makes an appearance. The selection of this particular pink Floyd shirt means that Dean is somewhat ill at ease and will likely act out in some pigheadedly childish way unless he is given the some affectionate attention.  
  
Cas, not knowing this, just watches and waits for a verbal response.  
  
"Probly not worth it just to get rid of a lousy bit of grace.  I get not wanting to feel like a used condom, but..."  
  
"I don't think that's what it is for him," Cas begins delicately, his blue eyes bright.  
  
"Is for me," Dean huffs, punching his arms through the sleeves of a flannel overshirt as though he was hitting something.  
  
Castiel blinks thoughtfully, weighing whether he'd make any headway if he asked Dean to elaborate.  Realistically, he knows that Dean will turn sullen and defensive if he presses the point.  It isn’t so much that he understands human nature so much as that he has been trained to know what topics Dean will and will not talk about.  More things fall under the category of ‘no’ than ‘yes’ unless the topic relates to sex with women, hunting, or classic rock.  
  
“I will tell Sam what I learned and let him decide his course of action,” Cas finally replies, sensing the futility of further discussion.  
  
“Like hell you will!” Dean replies irritably.  
  
Cas sighs, “Dean.  You can't decide for him."  
  
Being told that he can't do something instantly amplifies Dean's desire - verging on a physical need - to do something.  The hunter sets his jaw, crosses his arms, and obstinately shifts his stance so that one hip juts out.  Anyone who knows him would recognize that the change in posture accompanies an often-frustrating shift in attitude.  
  
Before he can make his snappy retort, though, the angel shakes his head decisively. He meets his lover’s eyes evenly, his expression somehow both fond and judgmental.  The overall effect is distantly condescending, though it isn’t his intent.  
  
“You know this, Dean.  Think how well past decisions on his behalf have gone.”  
  
The angel has taken the wrong tack; this is the second time in 24 hours that he had told Dean “no” without making any concessions or sufficiently padding his ego.  And he has added to it a reminder of past mistakes, which can only serve to make Dean defensive.  
  
“Like you’re one to talk about good decisions,” he scoffs.  
  
It always stings when the hunter takes potshots.  The more frustrating thing is that this isn’t a new insult - Dean has rehashed and re-blamed Cas for every mistake he’s made since they met.  Every trespass and misstep is fair game in any argument, regardless of how many times Cas has soothed or atoned for the slight.  He knows that Dean is just pulling something from his arsenal of _I’m Not The Only Fuckup_ and that it’s not that Dean actually cares, at this moment, in this argument, about what Cas has done in the past.  It’s just a deflection and a sharp little retaliation for the fact that Castiel’s words stung him.  
  
All the same, Cas is slightly taken aback.  He presses his full lips together briefly, determined not to let this turn into a full-fledged fight, then shakes his head sharply again.  
  
“I am definitely one to talk about good decisions.  While many of my mistakes have been well-intentioned variations on a theme, I have learned to avoid repeating the exact same mistake,” he says calmly.  
  
“No, you just make ‘well-intentioned variations,’” Dean spits contemptuously, momentarily mimicking Castiel’s monotone cadence, ”and lie and kill and nearly end the whole damn world.”  
  
He regrets it as soon as he says it, but he won’t take it back.  He knows he should - he has resolved to _do_ better and _be_ better - but he can’t do much more than angrily push forward and try unsuccessfully to soften what he’d said.  
  
“You-you know so damn much, feathers, what exact same mistake am I making?”*  
  
Cas can’t hold in his exasperated huff.  
  
“Withholding information from your brother.  Treating him like a child.”  
  
 _And treating me like this_ , he adds silently.  
  
“I’m not… look, you know him.  You know how he is, how he gets an idea in his head that he’s gotta do something and then he just does it without thinking about the consequences.  He’s… he’s reckless.  He doesn’t get that one ‘a these times he’s not gonna just wake up, y’know?  Something’s gotta stick someday.”  
  
“Dean.”  
  
“You know I’m right!  You know that if you tell him it’s possible he’s gonna do it no matter what the risk is.”  
  
“That’s his choice,” the angel retorts, his patience thin in the face of Dean’s repeated petty insults.  
  
“Com’mon Cas,” Dean says, trying to switch strategies mid-stream, “If you don’t tell him, it’s not lying.  I’ll bet he’s already forgotten.  I mean, that was days ago already and it was late.  He’s prolly forgotten.  I’ll bet he has.  Come on.”  
  
“No.”  
  
Dean presses his lips together firmly enough that they go slightly pale at the center.  He bites back his nasty comment, knowing it’s not going to make his lover do what he says.  He still feels that niggling desire to hurt him for not helping him, but he squelches in and sets his shoulders resolutely.  
  
“Fine.  What’s it involve?  You ever done it before?”

“It involves inserting a special syringe into the neck and drawing the grace out from where it resides in the throat.”  
  
Dean shuddered, wrinkling his nose, “That’s fucking nasty.  You ever done it before?”  
  
“No, never.”  
  
“You got a way to practice?  Like can we have you practice on an orange or a sausage or something?” he asks, not at all comfortable with the idea of his lover shoving a big old needle into the side of his brother’s neck to suction out angel jizz.  Fucking nasty.  Fucking dangerous.    
  
“Dean, there is no way to practice except on a person who has this grace remnant in him.”  
  
Dean briefly considers offering up their guest as a test subject; he was freshly de-angelled and probably had a whole bunch of super-powered old angel grace that Cas could practice on.  Even as the thought crosses his mind, he knows that it’s not ethical and that he should know better for even considering it.  He doesn’t feel guilty, not exactly, but he knows enough not to say it aloud.  
  
“Okay.  Guess you’re gonna do your practice-run on me.  I’m not quite so fresh, got some dirty little angel footprints on my soul, right?  Right.  Let’s just do this thing and get it over with.  If it works, great, you’ll have one de-gracing under your belt.  If it doesn’t… well, I can be a cautionary tale.”  
  
Castiel sighs, his shoulders slumping slightly at Dean’s words.  Both of the Winchesters have a tendency toward the melodramatic, but the elder of the two sometimes takes it to levels that verge on Victorian.  The angel attributes it to the fact that their lives are literally the stuff of gospel, which tends toward an overblown, grandiose sense of importance, but it still can be trying when one or the other puts an unnecessarily fatalistic spin on a simple situation.  
  
“If that’s what you want, I’ll do it,” he says quietly.  
  
Dean drags his fingers back through his short hair and nods.  He had half-hoped that Cas would back down in the face of his possible death or soul puncturing, but he can't show it.

“Yeah, I guess kind of.  Better me than Sam go first, you know?  It’ll be fine.  You wanna do it now, get it over with?”  
  
“Yeah,” the angel replies with a subtle shrug.  He worries his lower lip between his teeth briefly, then adds, “We can go down to the basement so that I can restrain you while I work.  Otherwise I’m fairly certain that you will have a difficult time holding still.”  
  
His lover nods quickly, then smooths down his overshirt to dry his suddenly sweaty palms.  Castiel’s suggestion that he would need to be tied down sends a flare of adrenaline through his legs that makes him feel like he is walking on live power lines.  His licks his lips, surprised to find his mouth has gone slightly dry.

“Yeah.  Yeah.  Let’s get it done with,” he forces a laugh, “Then I can catch breakfast and get the day started for real.”  
  
Cas looks at him skeptically, then nods again.  
  
They walk down to the basement without exchanging further conversation.  The angel is preoccupied with the procedure and everything that it involves; Dean is trying to think of how to remain stoic and manly while his angelic boyfriend jams a syringe into his neck.  He catches Cas playing with the instrument as they walk and the girth of the needle almost gives him a surge of nausea.  He’s not squeamish and he doesn’t fear pain, not really, but he’s never been good at just sitting still and passively letting someone do something to him.  He wasn't passive about much of anything.  
  
As a kid, he had all sorts of scrapes and bruises and he rarely cried or even complained.  There was no room for that in the Impala if he wanted his father’s approval.  It didn’t scare him, anyway, particularly since he didn’t usually have time to think about it until after it happened.    
  
What scared him was the annual physical or infrequent dental appointment, having someone look him over and decide if he was okay.  It seemed like he should know.  He got anxious if he needed a shot.  While the doctor swabbed his arm with rubbing alcohol, he’d feel his eyes prickling with tears.  He never pulled away, but he couldn’t look and he avoided speaking.  He looked anywhere but the doctor.  And it never really hurt, not compared to the other things he went through routinely, but the idea of it, when he had the time to think about it beforehand, scared him.  
  
He feels that same creeping anxiety, worse because he knows that this is actually dangerous.  It will actually hurt and it has the potential to hurt in a way that he can’t quite figure out.  What does it feel like when a soul is injured?  He’s pretty sure that it’s something like how he felt when he got out of Hell, but he still can’t quite imagine a soul or understand where his soul ends and where his mind begins.  
  
“Hey,” he begins when they walk into the room that they sometimes used to question demons, “Hey, what’s my worse case scenario here?”  
  
“Well,” Cas muses as he fusses with the restraining chair, “I could perforate your soul, which could reopen some of your mental injuries from Hell.”  
  
After his episode in Milford, the whole PTSD thing is a sore subject.  He feels defensive and anxious; his first impulse is to snap at Cas, but he shoves that down.  His second impulse is to wrap both arms around the angel and drag him in for one of those hugs where they just lean against each other with Castiel’s stubbly cheek pressed up against the side of his neck and his warm breath seeping in through the shoulder of his shirt.  He shoves that down too.  Instead he just nods.  
  
“Yeah, okay.”  
  
“Would you please sit down here and I will adjust the straps?” Cas asks, not looking at him.  
  
Dean is annoyed to find his movements are jerky as he takes a seat and starts to clip himself in to the chair.  _Look at you, being so helpful._   His companion gently brushes his hands away and continues to process of securing him to the chair and then finally immobilizing his head.  
  
With that accomplished, he pulls the syringe out of his pocket and holds it up for Dean’s examination.  The hunter had seen it a few minutes before, but not in any great detail; while Dean has a quick eye and a sharp memory, Cas had been intentionally keeping it from his view earlier.  In the clinical light, the silver syringe is chilling and strangely beautiful.  The hunter is glad that he hadn’t seen it before because it scares the crap out of him.  
  
Dean licks his lips and looks away.  
  
“Y’tryin’ to scare me?”  he asks.  
  
Castiel shakes his head, then moves closer.  His flat tummy brushes against Dean’s bound arm, making them both pointedly aware of the contact.    
  
“Y'know, if you wanted to tie me up, you could have just asked,” the hunter tries to joke, cracking his nervous bar smile at his outwardly impassive lover, “Can’t say I’ve got a needle kink.”  
  
“I don’t really want to do this,” Cas admits, looking him over.  He slides his slim, squarish fingers down Dean’s forearm to briefly clasp his hand, meeting his eyes with an inhuman intensity that takes Dean’s breath away for a half-second.  Cas often visually appears human, especially when he is holding still.  However, there are times when there is a preternatural focus or brightness to his eyes that communicates his age and weariness.  
  
“Weeeeeelp,” Dean tries again to put on a joking voice, “That’s just too bad because we need you to get some experience under your belt before you skewer Sammy.”  
  
The angel nods, then leans in to kiss him bracingly.  Dean intuitively pulls back as though he’s afraid someone will see them, but finds his movements halted abortively by the restraints.  He swallows quickly, his heart beating hard against the inside of his ribs.  Yeah, this got real, real fast.  He’s strapped to a chair and his boyfriend, his boyfriend who he just really pissed off a few minutes ago, is going to jam a needle in his neck and he really couldn’t get away if he tried. His mind is in a quiet loop of panic even as his lover tenderly kisses him.  
  
“I’ll be very careful, Dean.”  
  
“Yeah, okay.  Okay.  Yeah.  You know,” Dean says, lifting his slightly wide eyes to Castiel’s face.  He takes a short breath and forces it out as an audibly puff between his pursed lips, “I trust you, Cas.  You got this.”  
  
Saying that he trusts him is almost an apology in Dean’s language.  Cas nods, keeping his face close to his for a moment.  He nuzzles his cheek again his like a housecat, then kisses his mouth again.  This time, Dean stays close and leans into the gesture as much as his limited mobility will allow.  
  
“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbles quietly, “Be all cuddly and crap before you stick me with that thing.”  
  
There is a dirty joke there, but Cas misses it.  Dean sometimes thinks that he’d be almost disappointed if Cas got stuff like that; as it is, he can keep those jokes all to himself and chuckle at them in his head, in private.  Like the most inside of all inside jokes.  Other people would probably think it was strange, but sometimes Dean needs to keep things for himself.  As a child and teen he squirreled away little items that reminded him of good moments - stupid, valueless things like the thinning, oil-spotted diner receipt from one of their celebratory family dinners, or a button off of his dad’s leather jacket.  He’d kept a sticker that had peeled off of one of Sam’s Transformers tucked into the inside fold of his wallet till he died the first time.  But just like that, things got lost, stolen.  Ruined.  He learned to keep some small, private pleasures safe in his mind.  He memorized words, moments.  He repeated important things to himself every night before he fell asleep, things that people had told him that he wanted to keep.  For a kid without his own room (and at times, not even his own suitcase), the inside of his skull was sometimes the only place that was really his.    
  
That is the real reason that he doesn’t think he’d ever really be comfortable with Gadreel.  Gadreel had slipped into the one place in the universe where no one else could follow him.  Even when Cas visited his dreams or gently spoke into his thoughts, it was different than having someone basically roaming the halls of his mind with all of the doors unlocked; to this day, he has no idea what Gadreel actually knows about him.    
  
It is also why he is willing to purge any remnant of Gadreel that could be lingering on his soul or in his mind.  He wants a mental, spiritual purge; he wants his footprints gone.  
  
“Are you certain that you want to rush me?” Cas asks softly, his voice flicking up in pitch at the end to indicate that he was trying to make a joke.  
  
“If _that’s_ going to upset you…”  
  
Cas picks up a cotton ball and soaks it in rubbing alcohol thoughtfully.  He gently rubs it against the side of Dean’s neck, partly to stall for an extra moment while his quick mind maps out the next few minutes.  The movement is light, but the disinfectant is cold and the hunter shivers involuntarily.  
  
With that accomplished, Cas nods to himself and then looks at Dean again, "This is the last time that I'm going to ask; do you want me to stop?"  
  
 _Well yeah, actually.  I am not at all into this bullshit and I really don't fucking like this._  
  
"Nah, I'm good," he replies aloud.  Seeing that Cas doubts his response, he adds a bit defensively, "Come on, Cas, just get it over with."  
  
The archangel sighs and gives the business end of the syringe a quick antiseptic wipe, then nods.  He takes Dean's chin in a firm hand and turns his head to the side, then very carefully lines the tip of the needle up against his neck.  His bright eyes flick up to Dean's face uncertainly for a moment before he gently eases the sharp tip through the skin and muscle.  
  
It's not bad at first, about like getting a vaccination.  Dean draws a sharp breath but doesn't move aside from choosing an institutional green brick in the wall to fixedly stare at.    
  
The needle goes deeper though, and it begins to hurt differently.  He feels that though it's going to go clean through and pop out on the other side.  He can feel his face going pale and his lips getting slightly cool at the thought.  His lips twitch and press together as he tries to muster a joke or a quippy little remark - _Cas the Impaler_ , but that has connotations and he’s too distracted to even speak.  His jaw starts to clench as he thinks that the needle can’t possibly go any deeper and that it has to be almost over.  
  
He hears Castiel’s soft voice beside him murmuring, “It’s all right… almost there…”  
  
He wants to reply to his lover and say something obnoxious, but it’s all he can do not to throw up.  The pain has turned from irritating to uncomfortable to intense, and the strangest thing is that he doesn’t exactly even know what hurts.  It doesn’t feel like just muscle or even bone anymore.  He hears himself gasp, and his white, pressed lips finally part as he exhales a shaky whimper of agony.  
  
There’s nothing after that, though.  The room falls away, Castiel’s quiet voice and the pressure of his hand is gone as everything turns black and then a screaming red.  He sees Allistaire standing over him, smiling as if unsurprised to see him.  
  
 _Am I dead?_ he wonders, panic rising hot in his belly. _Again? Did Cas fucking kill me?_  
  
Allistaire walks around him with a leisurely gait, straight-backed with just the slightest bit of slouch. Just enough to make him look as though torturing people doesn’t really take his full attention, and he’s perhaps mentally recounting a favorite book or composing the recipe for the motherfucking perfect souffle.  Dean hates everything about him, his long fingers, his irritating speech mannerisms, the way he cocks his head to the side.  His black eyes, and how he can never tell exactly what he’s looking because of the absent irises.    
  
“Dean, Dean…” he sings, croons like a half-drunk Bing Crosby, “My pretty, precious piece of meat.  Veal, today, it seems.”  
  
Dean can’t move.  He can’t turn his head, can’t move his limbs.  They might be broken, as he thinks about it.  They might be absent.  For all he knows, Allistaire might have cut them off and he could be a torso in the stocks.  The thought terrifies him, as does the fact that he doesn't actually know, but he can’t maneuver himself to look at anything other than his old tormentor.    
  
He remembers reading a book in a hotel a long time ago - a James Bond book, Casino Royale. His dad liked Bond, and they’d watched a couple movies together.  Goldeneye was one of them, though his dad didn’t like Brosnan.  Preferred Connery, would take Dalton.  _Brosnan is too much of a damn prettyboy_ , said John one night.  Dean agreed, of course, though a smal part of him liked how Brosnan looked and acted.  John liked Bond, so Dean liked Bond.    
  
He didn’t like the book as much as he’d thought he would.  From what he could tell, Casino Royale kinda sucked for Bond - almost got blown up, totaled his car, got his balls beat with a tennis racket or something, and lost the girl.  He didn’t see why it was such a classic.  One thing he did remember though, and the thing that stuck with him, was the description of Bond’s torture at the hands of the doughy-faced LeChiffre.  Fleming wrote that there was a point in torture where a victim lost coherence and began to experience an almost-euphoria, and in those moments he could almost come to love his tormentor.    
  
He didn’t think it could be true at the time, and he thought it was one of the gayest descriptions he’d ever read.  Uncomfortably homoerotic, and it made him feel a bit bothered in a way that he didn’t want to think about.  He re-read that part several times, trying to wrap his head around it and why he felt strange when he read it.  
  
He remembered that chapter several times in Hell.  Why not, really?  He’d only lived thirty years, right?  Over 40 years in Hell, he had time to recount most of that time.  So why not think about Bond being naked to a chair and getting beaten, right?  Certain amount of relevance now that he never thought he'd ever have, looking forward at 15.  The torture euphoria did actually come from time to time, but Allistaire knew how to use it.  He played Dean like a fine instrument sometimes, other times like a fucking Gameboy.  Depending on his mood.  But there were a few times when Dean remembered feeling a spark of something that wasn’t hatred, something that was confused and delirious and absolutely fucking shameful.  
  
Looking at Allistaire now, he feels nothing but terror.  
  
“You’ll always wind up back here,” the demon sings to him, doing a lazy, waltzing step around him to pick up a dirty paring knife, “Every-every-every time…”  
  
 _DEAN_  
  
Castiel’s voice jerks him out of wherever he was.  Dean blinked rapidly at the bright, clean, clear light, his unfocused green eyes scrambling for purchase on something familiar.  
  
“Dean,” Cas repeats, taking his face in both hands, “Look at me.  You’re all right.  Tell me you’re all right.”  
  
“C-Cas-” he breathes shakily, struggling against his bonds.  His voice is weak, but it quickly picks up strength as he demands, “What the fuck did you do?  Did I die?  I was fucking in Hell and fucking Allis-”  
  
“I lanced your soul,” the angel says quietly, clear shame in his voice, “It wasn’t much, just barely.  I’m sorry, Dean…”

The statement doesn't completely make sense because his mind is muddled; he isn't even quite sure how he got to this point and why he was strapped to a chair in the basement of the bunker.  He remembers being hurt, very intensely hurt, but his brain is mapping it onto Hell and Allistair.  He tugs at the restraints and finds that they are distressingly secure.  It triggers a surge of terror.  Dean thrashes against the restraints, panicked like a trapped animal and needing to be free to move.  He doesn’t understand why Castiel would have him trussed up like this, and for a moment he wonders if this is also Hell, and Allistaire has simply altered his appearance.  That would be just like him, to make himself look like someone who Dean trusts before he guts him like a fucking fish.  
  
“Let me out, Cas.  Are you Cas?  Let me go, come on, fuck - god-fucking-dammit Cas, you stupid asshole - get me out of this!”  
  
He can feel the strap at his wrist cutting into his skin and rubbing, chaffing like a sonuvabitch.  The pain is real, solid.  It’s tangible and bodily, almost savory.  Salty.  He knows immediately that it’s a corporeal pain, not the sort of metaphor-made-solid that he endured in Hell.  He’s struck by he fact that he is very much alive, and even if he is trapped, he is trapped in the bunker, by Cas.  Why was it?  It had something to do with grace.  A needle... something.

He agreed to this, but what had it been?

There’s no danger - he knows it, logically - but he can’t completely let go.  He’s adrenalized, baselessly terrified, and a part of him knows that Castiel hasn’t released him yet because he could be a danger to himself.  What does that mean though - is he crazy?  Had Cas broken him?  What does it mean that he ‘lanced his soul?’  What was what he said, right?  Is Hell going to start coming through again, the way the Pit had for Sam?  
  
“Cas…” he growled, “Cas come on…”  
  
He fights he restraints, his eyes wide and his breath coming in short, shakey gasps as he makes one final effort to free himself.  The terror grips him hard, rocks him to the core, makes him fight as though he’ll die if he stops moving.  
  
Cas doesn’t speak, but reaches up to lightly rest as hand on his arm.  
  
The hunter finally tires and stops moving, then lets out one final anguished, shaking sob of breath and lets his body slump against the chair.  
  
The angels hands are on him then, gently soothing the cuts and abrasions that he inflicted upon himself in his mad fight for freedom.  He unbinds him and gently eases him into his arms, where Dean is distressingly, bonelessly limp.  He isn’t hurt, but he is emotionally spent and physically exhausted.  Castiel supports him easily, his seraphic strength silently obvious as he lifts him into his arms and helps him to a seat at a desk.  
  
Dean doesn’t really know what to say.  
  
“You’re all right,” Cas murmurs, stroking his hair calmingly.  He kisses his temple, laying his hand against the side of his neck and closing the thin perforation in his skin.  He delves deeper, carefully darning the tiny hole in his soul.  
  
The man sighs, closing his eyes, “Yeah.  Sorry about that.  The, uh, the uh panic.  Thing.  I’m fine.”  
  
“You were suffering a very clear memory of Hell,” Cas replied quietly, “It wasn’t real.  None of it was.  You didn’t die.”  
  
Dean is quiet.  
  
“If I did, would I go back to Hell?”  
  
The angel flinches at the words, then shakes his head once, sharply, “No.  Never.  You will never go to Hell again, Dean.”  
  
He kneels down at his lover’s feet and rests his hands lightly on the tops of his thighs.  His eyes search Dean’s face, then rapidly take in the slump of his body; Dean is almost limp in the chair, his muscles completely lax under Castiel’s palms.  
  
“Dean, I promise you that I will never let that happen to you.  If you ever think that you’re in Hell, no matter what you see or hear, or think your see or hear, remember that I said this.  Just remember that it’s not real.  I won’t let it ever be real again.”  
  
Dean smiles crookedly, still pale, “But we’re all going to Hell.  To jalbreak some angels who made poor life choices.”  
  
“You know… that isn’t what I meant… not literally, going to hell, physically…”  
  
Dean laughs wearily.  Cas pauses, looking at him, then unfolds his dark, sleek wings from the spaces between molecules.  Dean exhales slowly in unexpected relief at the sight and reaches forward to bury his fingers in the thick feathers, eliciting a quiet moan from the angel.  He slumps forward and wraps his arms around Castiel and pulls him closer, almost into his lap.  
  
“Did it work?”  he asks tiredly against the angels short, thick hair, “Did you get it all?  The grace?”  
  
Cas nods against his chest, his wings curving closer around him almost like an embrace.  He reaches into his coat pocket to pull out a glowing vial.  As he holds it up, Dean notes that there are only wisps of ether, like cobwebs of liquid light; he’s seen a surprising amount of bottled grace over the last few years and he can tell intuitively that this isn’t very much.  
  
He nods in acknowledgement.  
  
“So I’m clean?  Nothing left?”  
  
“Nothing.  There is no trace of Gadreel within you now.”  
  
Dean nods; to his surprise, he doesn’t really feel different.  He hadn’t thought that he was angel-powered or anything before, or that Gadreel’s lingering grace was giving him any kind of super powers.  He hadn’t even known it was there until Cas told him.  Still, he felt like there should have been some sort of physical sensation now that it was gone, like the relief of removing a deep splinter.  Failing that, he thought he might get some sort of mental peace out of the process.  
  
He still feels just as creeped out about being possessed by the blond angel as he did before.  The only good thing is that now no one else will know; other angels won’t look at him and think ‘Ah, there goes Gadreel’s bitch ride.’  He feels better about that, but it’s a passive sort of “better” and it’s less significant than he’d hoped for.  
  
“Guess I thought I’d feel different after.”  
  
Cas tilts his head up to kiss Dean’s chin.  When he speaks, his voice is tentative, as though he’s uncertain how to string words together into an order that won’t make Dean angry.  
  
“Having the vestiges of Gadreel’s grace in you didn’t make you different.”  
  
“Yeah,” the hunter replies finally.  It wasn’t the grace; it was the possession itself.  That had changed something about him, and taking care of some physical remnant couldn’t restore the feeling of invulnerability that he’d enjoyed before.  The inside of his head didn’t feel completely his, or completely secure, anymore.  
  
Even though he’s only been up for an hour, but he’s already worn out from his recollections of Allistaire.  He kisses Castiel’s forehead, then pulls back and claps him on the shoulder.  It’s time to start the day for real; the world is ending and he doesn’t have time to deal with the fact that he’s still constantly expecting to wake up in Hell.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to irridescentsong and roosterblue42 for their kind assistance with this chapter. Sometimes feedback is crucial. :)

In the morning, Jacob feels more coherent and prepared to face the day.  He vaguely remembers Charlie showing him to an empty guest room the previous night, but the memory has a gauzy, dreamlike quality to it that smooths over the more mundane details.  He has a vague recollection of hallways and stairs, light switches.  Directions to some kind of common lavatory and shower.  Mundane.  
  
He gingerly climbs out of bed, groaning at his stiff limbs as he recalls the _less_ mundane aspects of the evening.  A missing week of time, an angelic possession, another angel in a human body.  His memory of what Castiel looked like in his true, seraphic form has largely faded to a number of keywords, but remembering his preternaturally bright eyes staring at him out of a human face, he has no doubt that it was real.  With his horizons broadened as they have been, he has no reason to doubt that _anything_ at all is real.    
  
He pulls on his shirt from the previous day, then makes a face at the smell.  It’s not like it’s sweaty or gross from being worn, despite that he must have worn it for a week solid; instead, it smells like smoldering leaves and smoke layered over something metallic.  Books always make it sound like the combination of leather and fire is a sexy smell, but the reality is that it’s actually pretty disgusting.  Still, they’re the only clothes he has unless he takes Charlie up on her offer to steal some out of the laundry for him.  
  
He’s about the same size as the one long-haired guy, but he doesn’t really feel like joining the army of the flannel-clad.  Not to say he wouldn’t bum around for a few hours in borrowed clothes while his go through the wash, but in any case he can’t just walk naked out into the hallway.  
  
As he tugs on his shoes, he tries to assess exactly what hurts.  The pain is unnaturally uniform across his entire body, the way tea from a tea bag evenly colors water.  It feels like his muscles are sunburned, mixed with a bit of that post-fever fatigue.  His brain feels tired, stretched out of shape, and his vision feels limited as though he has a migraine.  He knows that Arakiel’s possession had broadened his vision, what bits of it he could remember, but he wonders if he how long it will take to readjust to the limitations of human sight.  
  
Giving the room a cursory once-over, he steels himself before walking out into the hallway.  It’s quiet and empty, but he can feel that there are still other people in the bunker.  Sometimes he wonders if it’s sparks or static electricity, but he always feels the buzz of other people in his bones; he can always feel when he isn’t alone.  He thinks that everyone must feel that way, and that everyone must likewise feel the ringing echo of an empty house.  
  
He’s surprised to find he’s lonely.  He spends a lot of his time alone when he’s home - works from home, no girlfriend - but without the occupation of another personality, it seems quiet in his head.  Empty, where he’d always felt like his inner life filled him to the brim.  
  
He curiously walks through the halls, peering into darkened doorways as he makes his way toward the heart of the bunker.  Even without knowing how many people live here, he knows that he has to eventually run into someone if he just keeps walking around.  Aside from want of companionship, he is motivated by curiosity.  It seems amazing that this place, which looks like an export from an old movie, is just nestled in the woods in the middle of nowhere.  It’s just as astonishing that its inhabitants have just invited him in to wander unescorted despite the obvious value of the furnishing and the fact that he has recently been possessed by an angel.  
  
Wandering isn’t the goal though; ideally, he would like to find Charlie.  However, the first person that he meets is a middle-aged Scot in a rather luxurious bathrobe.   Crowley looks at him for a long moment in a way that makes Jacob feel vaguely unsettled, trying to place him, before approaching him.

"I hope I am safe in assuming that you're no longer housing a homicidal angel?"

  _Homicidal?_

 Jacob glances at him in surprise, continuing to walk rather directionlessly down the hall.  He doesn't know where he's going but doesn't want to seem as though he's just wandering around hoping to find someone to talk to, even if it's true.  

 "Just me in here," he says in a guardedly friendly way.  It's the kind of tone he uses with a prospective client who is trying to lowball him in a consultation.

 "Well, there's a relief," Crowley replies drily, "The Winchesters have a way of taking in strays.  Discarded vessels, former kings of Hell, prophets, _gamer girls_..."

 "Which are you?" 

 "Former king of Hell," he says casually, gesturing to their left to indicate that they should turn that way.

 Jacob doesn't know why, but he follows the cue and heads up the hallway toward the kitchen.  He isn't sure if this other man is making fun of him or if there is actually something post-demonic about him.  He looks at him critically, as though he'd be able to see the remnants of sawed off horns or the wiggle of a tail down the back of his trouser leg.  However, he looks extremely normal, verging on unassuming and the designer just raises an eyebrow at him. Nothing seems impossible this morning, but he isn't going to make himself sound gullible by asking for proof.

 "I know, it's a lot to swallow," Crowley says with a lazy lift of his shoulders, "Angels, demons.  Bet before this you were a pretty normal fellow."

 Jacob nods and follows Crowley into the kitchen, where he just watches as the reformed demon pulls a loaf of bread from the top of the refrigerator.  He sets it on the counter, then retrieves a jar of jam and a tub of butter.

 "Most people are pretty normal, really, until something like this happens.  Toast?" he asks.  When his breakfast companion nods, he pulls out four slices of bread and continues, "But welcome back to 'normal.'  I suppose that the small mercy is that you're not trying to kill us now."

 "I was trying to kill you?" he asks, surprised.

 Crowley can very easily recall the tall, brown-skinned man's powerful gait and the inhuman gravity of his body as he walked up the driveway toward them at Emily Dwyer's house in Oklahoma.  He hadn't thought that he would die, not really, but he had felt an unaccustomed flutter of concern for the boys on Arakiel's hit list.  Not to say that he wouldn't have killed them all just to be thorough, but most angels are rather no-frills and don't deviate far from their plans.

 "Arakiel was, yes.  So I suppose it's unfair to say you, since you weren't really you at the time."

 The man makes a considering sound, his brow furrowed and his thick brows drawn together uncertainly.

 "Don't remember?" Crowley asks as he drops the bread into the toaster one slice at a time, "That's to be expected.  An angel as big as that one would have to keep you unconscious to avoid burning your brain to a cinder."

 Jacob can almost feel the sensation of his mind being too open and his brain feeling over-full, like a water balloon about to burst.  Then it all went black and there was nothing but peace and silence.  Whether or not this guy was once the King of Hell, he seems to know something about angels.

 "How do you know so much about all of this?"

 "I've been around," Crowley replies with a wink, seeming almost like his old self for that instant.  But it passes quickly and he seems like a tired, slightly lonely human again. 

 He drags his hand back over his short, thinning hair as though suddenly aware of the age of his body.  He shakes his head and sets about the process of making a pot of coffee.  Coffee is something he definitely enjoys this time around, much more effective than tea.  The taste took a bit of time getting used to, but he's adaptable as hell and just a bit bitter himself.  It seems like a good match, really.

 Over the last two weeks, he's spoken mostly to the Winchesters and to Gadreel.  The Winchesters were flippant and demanding, Dean moreso than Sam; Sam was looking for the humanity that he had rekindled within him and as a result was actively trying to overlook their history.  No one could ever accuse Dean of dropping a grudge, though.  

 Gadreel would talk to anyone rather than offend them by turning down conversation, but Crowley knows that it's more than politeness; the two developed an interesting bond after Gadreel's ghostly adventure.  Crowley had lied for him, then saved his life.  They are the two formerly immortal creatures in the house and there was a certain commonality between them as they adjusted to a human life.  They also have the shared experience of having wronged the Trans, who dislike them both.

 In any case, the deposed King of Hell craves conversation.  

 "I'm Crowley."

 "Jacob," the taller man replies, holding out a hand to shake.

Crowley grasps his hand and is surprised by how pleasant it is to have physical contact with another person.  Sam occasionally claps him on the shoulder, and Gadreel sometimes sits a bit too close, but it's not quite the same.

 "Good t'meet you.  How are you feeling after the angelic joyride?"

 "I feel hungover," he admits, shaking his head.

 "Coffee and some salt will help with that.  Probably need to get some water into you too..." Crowley muses, retrieving the toast when the toaster bings cheerily, "You're probably dehydrated.  You want butter, or jam, or jam and butter?"

 "Jam and butter," he replies, watching as Crowley carefully prepares the toast.  He wonders when the last time was that someone prepared food for him.  

 He's been on his own by choice for about six years, since he got divorced in his mid-twenties.  Even when they had been together, Andrea hadn't been the sort of woman who cooked. She had insisted that they both be self-sufficient, where her definition of self-sufficient tended to mean "do it yourself." The marriage had been a mistake and was blessedly short-lived, though the financial ramifications are still a dark spot on his credit report. 

 "So why did he let you go?" Crowley asks.  He hasn't spoken to the other household inhabitants and doesn't know that Arakiel had essentially dropped this vessel to take his other.  

 "He wanted to pick up his other vessel.  That girl.  Allison, I think."

 "Ah," Crowley murmurs.  That makes a lot of sense to him.  

 He hadn't really trusted her; being king of hell had given him a rather keen ability to spot dishonesty. She was a surprisingly adept little liar, but she was just guilty enough and just ill-prepared enough to catch his attention.  He never thought that she was malicious, but some of the cruelest people he'd known weren't; sometimes true cruelty was born simply from selfishness and righteously justified "good intentions."

 "I've never seen an angel with two vessels before," he adds minimally, inviting Jacob to share what he knew.

 "Is it really that weird?" Jacob asks, "Those two guys last night seemed to think so.  So did that angel.  I mean, I guess they'd know, but I guess it just... I don't know.  The whole thing is weird to me, so I don't think I'm in a good place to judge what's weird anymore.  Like weirder than anything else, I mean."

 Crowley laughs a little and hands him a plate.

 "They said he would be back for me."

 "And are you going to let him in again if he asks?"

 Jacob considers that.  

 "I have to say yes, don't I?  I mean, for him to just take over again."

 "Yes.  Unlike demons, angels need consent.  However, angels are very literal about it and will take a 'yes' given under torture, trickery, or intoxication.  All they need is the word."

  _Just take Gadreel, the well-intentioned liar._

 The other man looks at him thoughtfully, then takes a bite of his toast as though the thought doesn't bother him.  The combination of salt and sugar is exactly what he wants; the oil in the butter feels surprisingly nourishing and he can almost feel his body rejoicing at the influx of calories.  He chews for a moment and swallows, using it as a way to stall while he composes an answer.

 "I don't think he'd do that."

 "He might, if he was desperate."

 "If he was desperate, I'd probably say yes," Jacob says, nodding.

 Crowley looks at him critically, then reaches for two mugs.  He keeps his attention on the mug to lift some of the pressure of speech from the younger man.

 "You do realize that angels are not humans... it's not like someone dies and goes to heaven and their soul turns into an angel.  Sometimes those religious types get their facts mixed up, but that isn't how it happens.  Angels are angels.  Demons, demons are more predictable, easier to figure out because they started off as human.  Human brain patterns, human psychology -  twisted but human.  Angels are something else and they don't think like you do."

 He hands him the mug and concludes, "I would be wary of any situation that would make one 'desperate.'"

 Jacob takes the cup and looks at it, then at Crowley.  It's hard for him to figure out what this man is thinking, or if he can trust him.  It's hard to claim to be the king of hell, then go doling out helpful anti-angel advice with any kind of credibility.  Even so, he feels the truth in his words when he looks into his tired eyes.

 "Yeah, okay.  You got any cream or sugar?"

  
\----------  
  
Dean maintains that he is going to research alternate routes into Hell, but Cas knows that Dean will likely doze off with a stack of books in the library.  With that in mind, the angel accompanies him to the library and gets him settled into the leather armchair in the corner, rather than guiding him to one of the long tables.  
  
While Dean peruses a book on demon lore, Cas flits through the room, skimming other books for topics that might be of interest to his weary companion.  The Men of Letters compiled an incredible amount of information over their tenure as a secret society, but much of what they knew was incomplete and many of the details are incorrect.  The inaccuracies are occasionally charming to the archangel, though judging by the heavy annotations that Gadreel has supplied in the margins of several books, not everyone in the bunker is so tolerant.  
  
Within a few minutes, Sam joins them with a surprisingly intense expression on his pointed features.  
  
"Hey, good morning," he says brightly, though both Dean and Castiel can tell that he isn't interested in small-talk.    
  
Even so, he's polite enough to follow it up with a 'how are you?', and Dean acknowledges his effort by giving him a shrug and some hackeyed cliche about sleeping like the dead and rising feeling like a zombie.  He omits their early morning experimentation with the big silver syringe, deciding that he's not ready yet to broach the topic; across the room, his angelic companion is similarly quiet despite that he had planned to immediately offer the option to the younger Winchester.  Clearly, putting a  little puncture wound in Dean's soul had made him a bit skittish about a second attempt.  
  
Unfortunately for both of them, the thought is fresh in Sam's mind.  
  
"So, ah, did you find out anything about the whole grace extraction thing?"  he asks without preamble.  
  
Cas exchanges a look with his lover, who reaches up to lay his hand defensively over the the side of his neck without even thinking about it. The angel licks his full lips uncertainly, a gesture he had initially mimicked from both of the brothers and now unconsciously repeats when stalling.  
  
"Yes.  We attempted it this morning on Dean."  
  
Sam's eyes widen briefly as he glances from Castiel's somber face to Dean's slightly guilty one.  He notes his faded pallor and chews the inside of his lower lip thoughtfully as he waits for Cas to elaborate.  
  
When he doesn't, he presses, "And how'd it go?"  
  
"I was too thorough and went too deep," he confesses readily, clinically, "I wounded your brother's soul."  
  
"What?"  
  
"Geez," Dean huffs, shaking his head and putting his hands up defensively, "I'm fine."  
  
Sam, however, has already crossed the room to crouch down beside the chair and scrutinize him, though he isn't sure what he's looking for.  To his eye, Dean looks slightly drawn and overtired, but not injured.  He realizes that he doesn't quite understand what an injury to the soul actually involves, or how it relates to anything else.  Still, he is concerned by both Castiel's awkward admission and Dean's macho posturing.  
  
"Dude, too close," Dean says, applying a hand to his brother's chest and giving him a light shove back, "I said I'm fine."  
  
Sam looks at him critically for a moment before asking, "So you think it's safe, huh?"  
  
"If Dr. Sexy here can curb his enthusiasm, yeah.  You won't enjoy it, but it's not gonna kill you.  I mean, you know I don't recommend it because it hurts like hell and it's y'know, dangerous... but ah," he casts a glance in the angel's direction, "You're an adult.  You're gonna do what you wanna do."  
  
Sam wonders for a moment if the process had doubled as a lobotomy, because Dean sure doesn't like to acknowledge his own agency.  He blinks slowly, then looks at Cas.  
  
"So, uh, what's it involve?  Like what am I getting myself into here if I say yes?"  
  
"I will insert a thick needle into your neck and extract the grace," he replies simply, already weary of both the explanation and the process itself, "Your risks are soul injury and death."  
  
"Soul death?" Sam asks, alarmed.  
  
Dean smirks and answers for his companion, "Death-death."  
  
"Oh," his brother says, visibly relieved, "That's not so bad."  
  
Dean has a fleeting moment of unreality spiked with cynicism; death has become mundane in the face of repetition.  
  
"Yeah, and if he kills you..." he tells him, glancing at Cas.  He leaves the rest of the threat unspoken and Cas rolls his eyes, though he is secretly uncomfortable with the whole proceeding.  
  
From there, it's a short trip to the basement again.  Dean insists on going because he wants to oversee the process; he has some macho big brother verbiage, but the reality is that he wants to be close in case something goes wrong.  He knows that he would be powerless in that situation, but he would rather be there than hear about it secondhand.    
  
Sam looks enormous buckled into the chair; it's old and clearly intended to restrain much smaller people.  The straps and buckles will still do their job, but his strong, tall body dwarfs the equipment in a way that seems to surprise everyone.  He seems calmer outwardly than Dean felt, but he also has the benefit of knowing that his brother already survived this process.  
  
"Can I have the grace you took from Dean?" he asks, his intelligent eyes keen and interested.    
  
"Yeah, sure," Dean answers, feeling it's his right to decide what happens to it, "If you got a use for it, not like I want it."  
  
Castiel looks at Sam consideringly, understanding his motivation suddenly.  He doesn't indicate it aloud or through any change in his facial expression, but the strength of Sam's devotion moves him.  He doesn't look at Dean, though his thoughts stray to curiosity - what would Dean have done to restore his grace, if he'd wanted it, when they had believed that it was completely gone?  How much pain would he have undergone?  
  
Without asking, he knows that Dean would have readily offered himself up for almost anything. He feels a warm glow in his chest at the thought, though it is bittersweet with the knowledge that any sacrifice from Dean would have been due at least in part to his own lack of self-worth.    
  
He lightly touches Sam's fingertips, watching his eyes, then says, "Sam, you know that the grace that I can extract from the two of you isn't enough to restore him, don't you?"  
  
He can tell that the words disappoint the younger man, but Sam nods as though it's no surprise.  Dean's eyebrows flick up in judgment, but he doesn't say anything.  
  
"Yeah, I know.  I still want to do it."  
  
"All right," Castiel says with a nod, "We will start then."  
  
He's much more skittish than he was with Dean.  Where he had been nervous earlier because he wasn't sure exactly what he was doing and the limits of the hunter's endurance, he is now uncomfortable with the process because he is thoroughly aware of exactly what those limits are and how easy it is to damage the tissue-paper shell of the soul.  
  
It doesn't help that Dean is watching him as though he expects for him to screw up, though he knows that the older hunter wouldn't be allowing this to proceed at all if that were actually the case.  Still, the intense scrutiny makes him feel like something other than the nearly infallible archangel that he is.  
  
Taking a deep, unneccessary breath, he slips the needle into the side of Sam's neck.  He can feel the web of veins within the muscle and carefully avoids major arteries as he slides it deep.  Sam is initially silent; as the needle slides slowly deeper, passing from the reality of his physical body into the basin of his soul, he makes a quiet sound of pain and his body turns rigid.  
  
Cas can see his soul clearly, glowing within him as his true face.  He can just as easily see the ghost of Gadreel's grace where it clings like cobwebs inside him.  This time he knows better than to go so deep; he accepts that traces will remain, unlike in Dean.  Part of him knows that he was so thorough for selfish reasons; he still resents Gadreel's possession of his beloved companion and he wanted to erase any trace of his time with him.    
  
Sam groans lowly, though the sound turns breathy, higher before he presses his lips together.  
  
"You're all right," Cas assures him, "We're almost done."  
  
Dean, however, has gone slightly pale at the sound.  He manages to stay where he is rather than knocking the angel's hands away and yanking out the needle, but it pulls at something deep in him.  
  
It triggers a memory of the year before when Sam had been so sick that he had slept near constantly, burned out by the building energy of the trials.  One night he'd curled up on the sofa in the lounge, a sofa that was much too small for him, and fallen asleep while they watched the news.  He'd moaned in his sleep, a sound very similar to the one that he had just made.  A deep, tired pain.  
  
The trials had been a mistake.  He realizes now that even if there had not been angels trapped in Hell, locking it all up presented more problems than it corrected.  They'd learned that when heaven was closed off, and the good human souls were trapped in the veil between life and death - what then was happening with the nasty little bastards who couldn't make it into Hell?  They had only been thinking of things coming _out_ of Hell, not the things that needed to go inside.  If Hell was locked up, earth would simply become Hell as the backlog of souls barred from the underworld milled about.  It would take longer, but they would turn to angry spirits, and at some point those spirits would find a way to become demons. It was a matter of balance.  The Winchesters upset the balance constantly, but it doesn't mean that they can't recognize that it exists.

If he was less selfish, he would be looking at how to reopen Hell, not how to just get the angels out.  But there is also the fact that Abaddon is hell-bent (ha ha) on creating a battalion of knights of Hell using the angels trapped inside.  That can't be allowed to happen, because there's the end of humanity right there.  Apocalypse #3.  Apocalypse right fucking now.

So it's back to thoughts of emancipating angels.  He thinks about the delicate design of Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, and Earth. A place for everything and everything in its place.  He likes about how Purgatory hadn't wanted him there, how it had spat him out.  There was a portal that had caught on to him and ripped him from that cursed afterlife and deposited him back on solid ground.  
  
His thoughts wander to where that had come from, or if there is anything similar in other places. If they could make something similar if they needed it.  
  
"Nnn," Sam gasps.  
  
Cas glances at Dean, then carefully begins to withdraw the needle.  
  
"No, no... don't stop, not if there's more."  
  
"That's enough," the angel tells him firmly, setting the syringe aside and reaching up to carefully hear the tiny triangular puncture in his neck, "The remnants of Lucifer's grace are in too deep - I won't risk it."  
  
Sam sighs, his body and soul relieved by the sudden peace and lack of pain.  He closes his eyes and takes a deep, steadying breath.    
  
In the silence, Castiel adds the new grace to what he had taken from Dean.  He's surprised by how much Gadreel had left behind, comparatively. It spoke volumes about the nature of the bond that they had built and how tightly Gadreel had wrapped himself around the younger Winchester, how completely Sam had come to welcome him.  There were traces of grace that would be impossible to separate from Sam because they had almost feathered together in places.  
  
Looking at that, Castiel feels almost jealous.  He wonders what it would have felt like to possess Dean and if it would have closed the spaces between them.  
  
"How do you feel?"  Dean asks curiously, wanting to know if Sam's experience mirrored his own.  
  
"Bout the same... neck hurts a bit though," Sam replies thoughtfully, watching as Cas pockets the grace and turns back toward him to unfasten the buckles.  
  
"So you don't feel different or anything?"  
  
"Nah, not really."  
  
"Huh."  
  
Sam lifts his hand to rub the side of his neck, frowning as he thinks over what has happened.  He is certain that only a few minutes have passed, but he feels worn out.  He's tired, but not unhappy.  
  
When Castiel places the tiny glass vial of grace into his hand, he stares at it in quiet wonder.  He's glimpsed grace before, but only from a distance.  In his hand, it has a beautiful unreality to it, like a the inside of a blown glass paperweight that is continually in motion or a miniature galaxy that shifts and moves through a full spectrum of colors.  The colors are heavier in the range of green and yellow, but there is a fluidity to it that makes it almost hard to focus on.  
  
It's very faintly warm.  
  
"Is this all Gadreel?"  
  
"Yes, as I said before I was unable to remove Lucifer's lingering grace."  
  
Sam closes his fingers around the vial, then impulsively leans forward to hug the angel tightly around the shoulders.  His broad-shouldered body makes Castiel seem small, despite that he is tall and fueled by a seraphic supernova.    
  
It takes him a moment to hug back, but he wraps his arms around him and briefly leans in to the contact.  
  
When Sam releases him, he asks, "What was that for?"  
  
"I dunno.  Just wanted to."  
  
Cas drags his fingers back over his mussed hair and glances over at Dean for his reaction, then smiles in his small way. It's almost secretive, as though the smile is just for himself and Sam.  
  
"I'm honored, thank you."  
  
It's a strange response, but Sam doesn't give it a lot of thought.  Their angel says weird things and finds deeper meanings all the time; even though Dean doggedly converses with Cas as though he's just a socially inept human, they all know that he's something completely alien and his motivations would be impossible for them to really understand.  So instead, Sam just claps him on the shoulder and grins back.  
  
"Yeah, okay."  
  
He shifts his weight to the ground and nearly falls over as his knees crumple beneath him.  Dean lunges forward to catch him, but it's an impossibly quick move by Castiel that keeps him on his feet.  
  
"Sorry, got up too quick I guess..." Sam replies sheepishly.  
  
Castiel helps him to sit again, though this time Sam remains perched on the edge, eager to be on his feet again.  The grace in his hand gives him  a strange kind of nervous energy.  
  
"I'm fine," he restates, smiling quickly and ignoring Dean's overly concerned look.  He's fairly sure that Dean is going to lay into Cas as soon as he leaves, accusing him of doing something wrong or somehow damaging him.  For good measure, he adds, "I think I could prolly use a nap, but really that wasn't as bad as I was expecting."  
  
"Well... there is still some of his grace lingering in you.  It's almost bonded to you, so I don't think I could have taken any more without hurting you."  
  
Sam nods at that, surprised and not surprised.  The knowledge doesn't weird him out, though he knows that it should.  To the contrary, it almost warms him to know that there is some indelible mark on him that proves that his bond with Gadreel is real.  He wishes that there was some answering mark on his lover that would serve the same purpose.  Of course there's no need for any physical proof of what they were or are, but it doesn't change his appreciation for the fact that something exists.  If he's honest with himself, he's always wanted this sort of closeness.   He'd looked for it in various places, first in a normal girl like Jess, and then in increasingly vulnerable women as his own heart tucked itself further in, distancing itself from things that could hurt him.    
  
"So, ah, I'm gonna go lie down, I think," he finishes lamely.  
  
He slides off the chair again, this time prepared for his body's lingering weakness.  Fortunately some has dissipated and he is able to stand unsupported, though Dean hovers close by like some sort of overprotective robin.  
  
"You need help getting to your room?  I don't want you passing out in the middle of the hall or nothing," Dean tells him bluntly, his intense green eyes searching his face.  
  
"Nah, I'm good," Sam replies breezily, waving him off.  
  
He texts Gadreel on the way back to his room, telling him that he has something for him.  He half considers adding that it's something personal, but that has a bizarre connotation that he doesn't really want to invite.  The last thing he needs is Gadreel picturing him sprawled out naked on a rose-petal strewn comforter.  Not that Gadreel would think of something like that, really.  And not that it would really be horrible if he did, though it could potentially be a bit disappointing as he isn't offering up his person so much as a piece of Gadreel's angelic soul.  
  
As he wearily flops down on his bed, he recognizes that he is wildly overthinking this; Gadreel is probably just neatly tucking away whatever book he'd started and trustingly walking back into whatever Sam has arranged for him.  
  
He hopes that he's quick about the whole walking back bit, as he is legitimately tired and would rather not be asleep by the time he makes it back.  Though that's unlikely, for as weary as his body and soul may be, his mind is buzzing through dozens of ways that he could present this gift to Gadreel and the things he could say.  The extraction process had been painful and wearing, but he is happy thinking of giving this gift to his beloved companion.  In his mind, the nervous energy is almost like when he had been planning to propose to Jess.  
  
He hears Gadreel's light, warning knock on the door and sits up part way to smile at him when he walks into their shared room.  It's still technically Sam's room and most of Gadreel's things are still down the hall in his own room, but there is a certain commonality to the space as the quiet blond has never actually slept in his own bed.  
  
"Hey," he says, lifting his arm to indicate that Gadreel should come and curl up beside him.  
  
The former angel, always eager to be near him, pauses only to pull off his shoes.  Within moments, he is pressed solidly up against his side.  To his mind, this is gift enough; with the world trying very hard to end itself, every day together feels like borrowed time and stolen moments.  He's selfish, wanting things that aren't his right and a life that is simpler than God intended as penance for his sins.  
   
"Is this what you wanted me for?" he asks with a quiet laugh as he leans in close.  He's sneaky, adept at stealing kisses between words.  Sam doesn't know where he learned it, but he can’t help but appreciate that he has.  
  
"No, no... I actually have, like, a legit present for you.  I've been trying to think of a cool way to give it to you, but I couldn't really think of anything," Sam replies, slightly drowsy and content to hold him.  
  
Gadreel smiles comfortably, propping himself up on one elbow to lazily watch Sam's face.  
  
"Oh?  What is it?"  
  
His companion pulls the little glowing vial out of his pocket and holds it out to him.  
  
Gadreel stares.  
  
"Sam, whose grace is this?" he asks, alarmed. His dark eyes are slightly wide, but his voice is still surprisingly even..  
  
Even as he asks, he knows that it's his own.  He can feel the comforting thrum of its familiar resonance with the universe; even though human eyes, he recognizes the colors and movements of the vaporous light.  
  
"It's yours.  It's from Dean and me."  
  
Sam pushes the bottle into his lover's hand, wanting him to take it.  He isn't sure what reaction he had expected, but this isn't quite it; Gadreel seems almost disturbed by the swirling ether in his palm.  
  
"Oh... the remnants of my possession of your vessels," he says slowly, scrutinizing the bottle, "I wasn't aware it could be extracted."  
  
"Me either," Sam replies, trying to sort out Gadreel's reaction.  
  
"Did it hurt?"  
  
"A little," Sam lies.  
  
Gadreel turns his full attention to his most beloved and asks, "Why did you do this?"  
  
It isn't accusing, exactly, but it isn't quite grateful either.  Sam can tell by watching the other man that he doesn't understand the motivation behind the gift, and he can tell that Gadreel is self-conscious because he's not sure if he _should_ understand.  
  
"I thought you might want it.  I thought... maybe you could use it, somehow."  
  
Gadreel nods, then shifts to rest his cheek against Sam's shoulder, "There is only the barest trace of it... I'm not sure what taking it into my body would do to me, or what I would become..."  
  
He blindly reaches for Sam's hand, then curls his fingers between his.  
  
"In any case, it is God's decision that I should be human and I don't feel that I should disobey that."  
  
Sam feels an uncomfortable little prod in his chest, an unexpected tightness as he realizes that this gift is more of a reminder of what Gadreel no longer is and will never be again.  In his usual silent, self-recriminating manner, he wonders why he thought that this would be a good idea.  Why'd he'd been so excited when he was basically rubbing his nose in his lose immortality.  Sometimes he just didn't think.  
  
"Oh..." he says, reeling slightly at his own guilt and disappointment, "I guess I didn't think of that."  
  
"No... It's very kind of you," the blond hastens to reassure him, recognizing that his lack of enthusiasm has hurt his lover.  He squeezes his hand quickly and says, "I'm happy to have it."  
  
Sam nods, momentarily at a loss for words.  He licks his lips and nods, pulling his companion closer and kissing his forehead.  
  
"Thank you," Gadreel adds, more forcefully than he'd intended.  The effect is earnest but awkward, like most aspects of the angel.  
  
"You're welcome," Sam assures him quietly.    
  
They're both quiet for a moment before Sam turns on his side to face Gadreel.  He wants to see him and understand him, and in retrospect he wonders what he had really wanted out of returning the grace to his defrocked angel; had he hoped that Cas would be wrong, and that things could just be the way that they had been before?  Looking at the strong-featured face inches from his own, he knows that he loves him deeply even in this form. However, the tiny bottle represents something that he would always want and they could never have again.    
  
"Are you upset?"  he asks finally.  
  
"No," Gadreel says with a subtle shake of his head.  He leans forward and presses his brow and the tip of his nose against Sam's.  Closing his eyes, he exhales slowly.  
  
"It's just..." Gadreel searches for words, hating the limitations of human language, "I was comforted by knowing that some part of my grace was there with you."  
  
He quickly adds, immediately self-conscious, "Though I can understand why you might not want the continuing contamination of my-"  
  
"That isn't it at all!" Sam protests, tugging him closer, "I just thought - I dunno - I had this crazy idea like... I-I dunno.  It's not that though, god, it's not that."  
  
They are both quiet for a moment before Sam tentatively kisses him, light and lingering.    
  
"It is only that..." Gadreel struggles for words, thinking how much easier this would have been in Enochian. "Now it feels as though it is behind us,"  
  
"Well... there's still some grace in me, but it sort of is," Sam says quietly, "Behind us, I mean, if you aren't going to try to become an angel again, then that part of us is over..."  
  
Gadreel stiffens slightly in his arms and takes a sharp breath through his nose.    
  
Sam continues without letting him speak, "We're something different now.  And y'know, that's okay because it's something good.  Really good."  
  
"Different is still difficult for me," Gadreel confesses quietly, "It is all difficult, being what I am now and feeling limitations in every part of my new life."  
  
Sam nods.  He knows that his lover is struggling, though he is powerless to help him in most regards; he doesn't know how to comfort someone - something, really - who had has his entire inhuman identity crushed down into something smaller, weaker, finite.  He knows he can't even comprehend what it means or how devastating it must be.  He sometimes thinks that Gadreel is obsessing over their relationship or a minor personal struggle, then is shocked to realize the magnitude of the issues that he is facing.  It isn't that he doesn't know, only that it's impossible for him to keep the information in mind all the time.  
  
"I want to help you..."  
  
"You already do.  This would be unbearable without you."  
  
Sam feels a twinge of guilt thinking about how he had tried to break up with Gadreel for "his own good."  There are few aspects of Gadreel's pain over which he has any control and he had very nearly screwed that one right up.  
  
"I just want to be close to you right now," Gadreel tells him earnestly.  
  
"We can do that.  Easy," Sam reassures him, plucking the vial out of his hand and setting it on the bedside table.  When he settles back, he pulls Gadreel into his arms, practically on top of him.  
  
The former angel presses close, and for a few minutes they just lie close in a silence that begs to be filled.  Neither know quite what to say now, and both just wait for something in the air to shift, settle, and normalize.    
  
Gadreel finally moves, leaning in to kiss him again.  It's chaste, closed-mouthed and undemanding.  Just like the man himself.  Adoring and somehow intelligent, thoughtful.  As though he is trying to politely, directly tell Sam about an ocean of feeling without forcing him to accept anything deeper than what is convenient for him.  
  
Sam kisses him back insistently, demanding his full commitment.  His hands move down to the small of Gadreel's broad back and pull him tight, pressing their bodies together firmly as Sam eagerly slides his tongue against his.  He feels strangely relieved as his fingers slip beneath the hem of his thin sweater - the contact feels like loosening a knot.  This is the closeness he'd wanted earlier that morning but had been afraid to attempt.  He realizes suddenly that there is too much 'what if?' between them.  _What if he's not interested?  What if it's awkward?  What if it's too much?_  
  
As they are now, Sam rucking up Gadreel's sweater and untucking the t-shirt beneath as the blond eagerly kisses him back, Sam knows that it _will_ be awkward and it _will_ be too much. Often. It _will_ be too everything and they _will_ both be embarrassed, awkward, and overwhelmed.  But he also knows that they'll laugh about it later, and he knows that Gadreel will be asking for more in every way except aloud.  
  
He already is - his cock is half hard against Sam's thigh and he's moving against him in an unmistakeably sexual way.  They're both moving together, rocking and almost squirming as they try to get their hands on each other.  
  
"Sam," Gadreel breathes.  
  
"Mm?" Sam asks, dipping his head down to kiss Gadreel's throat.  He hasn't done it much, but he already knows a spot that seems to pretty much short out the blond's ability to speak.  
  
"I-ah!-"  
  
He laughs softly against his skin, "Help me get your clothes off."  
  
Gadreel doesn't need a lot of encouragement - the only hindrance is the fact that he is just as eager to strip Sam out of his clothes.  They fumble clumsily, grappling with buttons and zippers, laughing self-consciously when Sam very nearly gets Gadreel tangled in his shirt and sweater as he pulls them off over his lover's head.  
  
The shock of bare skin in the cool room makes them both gasp.  Gadreel's body still runs slightly warm and at the moment he feels almost feverish. His skin is hot against Sam's and somehow he's ended up on top, settled between Sam's thighs with the thick weight of his cock pressed against his.    
  
It isn't where Sam had intended to be, and he's suddenly struck again by just how big Gadreel is - he's aware of how easily his solid weight presses his legs apart, how perfectly muscled his back is under his fingers, and how easily he supports himself on his forearms.  He tends to forget that there is a mismatch between his muscular body and his quiet intellectual mind, but their proximity brings it into sharp relief.  
  
He feels an aroused spike of adrenaline as one of their imprecise gyrations shifts Gadreel off-mark and slides his prick against the bottom of Sam's testicles and between his cheeks, skimming past his hole.  He gasps, quick color coming to his face.  He knows it was an accident, and they're at the wrong angle for anything to have happened even accidentally, but it still gives him a rush.  
  
Gadreel mutters some vague but earnest apology against his mouth before kissing him again.  He doesn't quite understand how they went from morose conversation to desperately grinding on one another, but it doesn't quite feel wrong.  To him it's a physical closeness that they both need in order to dispel some of the tension that they can't seem to just talk through.    
  
He is always a bit awkward, still just a few degrees off of human.  Even so, with his heart beating hard and his body seeming to know what to do, he feels more connected to this new reality.  He won't build his life on loving Sam, but he also can't turn away from the fact that Sam makes him feel that he has a starting point to find a place of his own.  
  
Another awkward movement draws a moan from Sam that's loud enough to surprise even him.  Gadreel curiously repeats the movement and gets a secondary, quiet gasp from his lover.  The more active role suits the blond somehow, more than how he normally seems to wait for his lover to initiate any contact.  There's a surprising confidence in the unfamiliar movements.  It's a bit much for Sam, though, who isn't quite ready to consider how much he likes the way that Gadreel feels on top of him.    
  
He pushes him back enough to get the leverage to roll them onto their sides.  This feels less new to Sam, less top-and-bottom, more suited to their face-to-face form of even communication.  Gadreel smiles quickly at him, and just that flash of brightness makes the hunter's heart skip.  
  
As their hands move over each other's bodies, Sam wonders where this is going.  They haven't really talked about sex or what it means for them, what either of them are comfortable with, or how far they want to go.  It seems like something they should have talked about along with everything else .  Now, though, even though his body has him wanting to jump the blond, his analytical mind is whirring away in the background about logistics, that he has no condoms and he doesn't know much about gay sex aside from the basic Tab A to Slot B mechanics. He feels distantly anxious, those 'what if' questions rising demandingly in his thoughts even as he kisses Gadreel hard enough to leave them breathless.  
  
He could probably just keep going and see where it leads, progress onward the way he would with a girl.  Foreplay sort of stuff, see if Gadreel gets going, see if it feels right, like something he can do.  He pulls back and presses Gadreel onto his back, gives him a firm kiss on the mouth before beginning to work his way downward with kisses and caresses, over his smooth belly and the sharp lines of his hips.  He appreciates his body, loves how he moves, but still needs to psych himself up to actually have a cock in his mouth.  
  
"Sam..." Gadreel breathes, watching him with intense green eyes.  He knows what he's doing - he isn't that naive - and he wants it.    
  
Still, it feels rushed and when it comes down to it, he doesn't really understand how this followed what came before, how they had gone from sullen to passionate..  The disconnect bothers him and makes him hesitate.  
  
"Sam?" he asks uncertainly.    
  
Sam lifts his head and meets his eyes.  His cheeks are flushed and his eyebrows lifted just slightly, just in exactly the way that makes Gadreel think he's probably the most attractive human man on earth.    
  
"Yeah?"  
  
Gadreel feels a little jingle of nerves, but he he pushes it back.  He wants this.  He doesn't get how it came to this point, he doesn't really understand what it means for them, but in the face of Sam's dark, lust- blown eyes, he doesn't actually want to stop to ask.    
  
Instead, he just asks softly, "Is this okay?"  
  
"Yeah... yeah!" Sam replies with a quick nod, "You okay?"  
  
Gadreel nods, settling back a bit against the pillows.  
  
Sam almost asks if he can continue, but he knows that he can.  He can feel Gadreel trying to hold still, practically quivering.  He can see the milky bead of precum tucked into the slit of his prick.   Taking a quick breath as though he's about to dive underwater, he leans down again and licks the head of his cock in several firm swipes.  Gadreel's entire body jerks at the sensation; he gasps quietly, closing his eyes.  
  
Sam is going entirely on porn-based knowledge and things he remembers girls doing for him.  Maybe he'd curiously thumbed through a Cosmo or two to imagine what '10 sizzling sex tips' girls were going to try out on him, just out of curiosity.  It's different on this side,though, not quite what he expects; his lover’s skin is salty and his precum is slightly bitter, faintly sweet. It's not unpleasant, but it's different.  The tip of his prick is smooth and hot on his tongue.    
  
Encouraged by Gadreel's response, he takes it into his mouth and sucks lightly.  He wraps his hand around the shaft and strokes slowly, focusing most of his brainpower on working his tongue over the tip and trying to figure out what works and what doesn't.  
  
It seems like everything works, though.  Gadreel isn't sure what to do with his hands, so he grips the sheets and tries not to squirm.  He does however moan and gasp almost continuously; Sam is surprised to find that he doesn't dislike doing this - his lover's carefully controlled pleasure, like usual, holds his full attention and make him want more and more.  He wants to make Gadreel let go and give in.  
  
He wonders what Gadreel would look like if they made love, what sound he'd make the moment when Sam first slipped into him.  Flicking his gaze up to his lover's flushed face and parted lips, he can easily imagine him crying out his name, writhing beneath him, gripping his waist with his strong thighs.  The image make him heady and he thinks again about the logistics of it, his hips rocking against the mattress for a bit of friction on his too-hard cock as he eagerly takes Gadreel into his mouth until the head bumps against the back of his throat.  
  
He's riled up enough that most of his anxiety slips back, dulling his concerns about not knowing exactly what he's doing.  His body pushes him for more, overwhelming his logic - he simply wants.  He could justify skipping a condom - really, the way they've fooled around already, it would be too late to prevent catching anything.  So the timing wouldn't be perfect, maybe it wasn't super romantic. Maybe they don't have it all figured out.  They're going to spend the rest of their lives together, so why wait?  
  
Gadreel moans loudly, his hips bucking once and nearly gagging Sam.  
  
The blond gasps out a clumsy apology.  His thoughts are less goal-driven than his lover's - it doesn't occur to him to think ahead to the next sexual milestone when this one seems to be working out so well for him.  The slick heat of Sam's mouth is rapidly bringing him close to his threshhold.  He knows that Sam is the freshest amateur, but he has no basis for comparison; all he knows is that it's good and he wants more.  He can feel the pressure building pleasurably, his balls drawing up, and his muscles tightening.  It has become harder and harder to hold still and not just piston his hips forward into the welcoming warmth.  
  
Sam pauses, lifting his head and stroking him with his hand for a moment as he catches his breath.  His jaw actually hurt less than when he went down on girls, just differently.  His lips, however, felt slightly swollen from the stretched slide along Gadreel's generous length.  
  
"Hey..." he asks breathlessly, too shy to meet his eyes, "Do you, ah, want to do more?  Like... you know, uh, like everything, all the way?"  
  
Riding the edge as he is, Gadreel would have probably agreed to anything.  Still unused to his human body and the driving force of testosterone, he lacks willpower; everything in him is driving forward, wanting satisfaction.    
  
The fact he isn't entirely sure what 'all the way' entails is the only thing that gives him pause.  Did Sam mean sex?  Penetrative sex?  Is there something else?  
  
The feeling of not-quite-right prickles again in his chest, chased by an unaccustomed adrenaline shot of uncertainty in the face of something new.   He still doesn't understand how they've come to this point, or why needing to be close means sex.  He desperately wants everything that Sam would give him, but he also knows quite a bit about impulsive decisions and regrets.  He knows that every time they've touched each other, Sam has needed to withdraw and recover.  He doesn't think his lover regrets anything that they've done, but he knows that 'all the way' would be too much.  
  
 But he is also afraid that if he says no, that Sam won't offer again.  He's afraid that this rejection will compound on his poor reception to Sam's gift earlier and Sam will think he just doesn't want him.  
  
He worries his lip between his teeth, meeting Sam's eager eyes with a small smile. His lover has eased up on him somewhat to give him enough mental acuity to speak.  
  
"Just this... please..."  
  
Sam feels his soft rejection as an abrupt disappointment and a sharp, quick sting to his pride.  He reddens slightly in embarrassment, but smiles quickly, nods, and murmurs a quick "okay, it’s cool." He's not the kind of guy to make a big deal of something like that or to pressure someone into sex; he doesn't want anything that isn't freely given.  He knows that Gadreel doesn't owe him anything, though he does desperately wish he'd said yes.  
  
Gadreel recognizes his lover’s disappointment and second-guesses himself; it’s one of only a handful of times that he’s said no to him, but he knows it's the right choice.    
  
"But I - ah, I want to do this for you too," Gadreel breathes, propping himself up on his elbows to watch Sam.  His lover's hand pulling his damp cock catches his focus for a moment before he drags his gaze back to his face.  
  
Sam pauses, surprised, and asks, "Now?"  
  
Gadreel nods, oblivious to the fact that a 69 isn't really a first date kind of move.  Sam, who knows better, is slightly impressed though he doesn't say anything; he isn't going to put any ranking or judgments on Gadreel's uninhibited offers.  
  
"Y-yeah... okay..." Sam says with a quick nod.  He is so hard that it's almost painful; sitting up to orient his body along Gadreel's knocks his prick against his belly, giving him an oversensitized jolt of sensation.  
  
Once settled with his head at Gadreel's hips, he's surprised by how well they fit this way;  Sam has a history of awkward angles and probably diminished performance due to the fact that he was often a foot taller than his female lovers.  Gadreel is very nearly his height, so lying on their sides facing one another lines them up perfectly.  
  
Slightly hemmed in with Gadreel's thighs almost touching his forehead, Sam has a sudden pang of almost-claustrophobia.  However, any coherent thought evaporates at the wet warmth of Gadreel's breath against his prick, followed almost immediately by a tentative swipe of his tongue.  
  
It has been awhile.  Not that-that long, not like he's been celibate for ten years, but it has been months since anyone has done this for him.  Last time had been a quickie with Amelia on her lunch break at work.  Was that already almost a year ago?    
  
"Ah, fuck..." Sam breathes as Gadreel thoughtfully, unashamedly explores the contours of his cock with his tongue and lips.  Ah, yeah, he had teeth too, but he knew enough to be careful with those.    
He knows that Gadreel is analytically cataloging his reactions and noting his preferences through trial and error.  It's not great head, but it's not bad either and Sam knows that next time will be exponentially better because his big blond bookworm is going to probably infect the laptop with a virus doing 'research' for self-improvement.  
  
God, he loves that idiot.  
  
For a moment, Sam just tilts his head back and lets Gadreel do what he's doing.  Inexperienced as the former angel is, it still feels amazing; he's curious and responsive and Sam is so keyed up that it wouldn't take much at all.  
  
Remembering suddenly that he'd just left Gadreel hanging, he leans in again to take his lover's cock between his lips.  The blond falters in his own concentration for a moment before doggedly continuing on, determined and direct as ever.  He knows that he liked when Sam took him in a bit deeper, so he pushes forward, keeping his lips tight, until he almost gags.    
  
Sam moans appreciatively, closing his eyes again and splitting his attention between pleasuring his lover and enjoying the tactile sensation of his beloved’s eager ministrations.  Gadreel groans quietly, the sound vibrating around Sam’s cock, his hips rocking restlessly to push his length further into Sam’s mouth.  The hunter wants to tell him to take it easy, not to choke either of them, but he just tries to move with him.  It's Gadreel's first time for this all around, and he has no idea how well he's holding up his side either; for all he knows, he might be terrible at this and his lover might just be desperate.  No way to know and no need to get self-conscious.  
  
He feels Gadreel's body tighten as the blond pulls off and presses his face to Sam's hip with a short gasp.  The hunter just barely pulls back in time to get his hand around his cock before Gadreel comes with a short, barely audible gasp.  
  
The blond pants quietly against his thigh for a moment before he takes a quick, bracing breath and leans back in to work on Sam again.  The taller man is surprised by his determination and this time just shifts to get more comfortable as Gadreel works his tongue over the head of his prick, giving the slit at the tip a thoughtful, exploratory prod with his tongue that makes Sam's entire body jerk.  
  
Its only a matter of moments before Sam reaches the limit of his endurance.  His hips jerk forward as he spills into Gadreel's mouth.  The blond obviously knew it was coming, because he pulls back so that more of it is on his lips and chin than in his mouth.  
  
He doesn't know what he thinks of it, being that it is warm, salty, and sticky.  He has mixed feeling about how it feels to have his lover come on his face - it's actually rather unpleasant, but he feels accomplished.  He reflexively flicks his tongue out to lick his lower lip and makes a face at the taste.    
  
Taking a deep breath, he lifts head to glance at Sam to see if he seemed satisfied at the outcome.  He wipes his face with his fingers, then smears that on the sheet before wearily sitting up and turning his body so that he is face to face with his flushed lover.  
  
Sam is still breathing quickly, though his entire body is limp and heavy in satisfied exhaustion. He wraps his arm around Gadreel and pulls him close, careful not to catch him with his sticky hand.  
  
"Was that adequate?" Gadreel asks when he pulls back, meeting Sam's gaze with a drowsy but expectant expression.    
  
"Yeah.  Yeah, it was great," Sam tells him with a quiet chuckle.  Gadreel is so direct and so thoughtfully forceful sometimes that he can't help but laugh, "D'jyou like it?"  
  
"Yes," he replies unequivocally, drawing another comfortable laugh from Sam.  
  
Even though he can already feel his usual post-coital panic coming on, Sam is comfortable.  He's surprised how much better he feels, how the tension in his shoulders and wrapped about his temple has eased all at once, leaving him almost boneless.  And damn, is he tired.  
  
"I'll change the sheets when we get up," Gadreel assures him.  
  
"I'll help," Sam offers, cuddling him close and kissing his temple..  
  
The fact that he had offered to have sex with the former angel suddenly dawns on him again.  He had been really into it and would have done it, right there without any hesitation, if Gadreel hadn't said no.  Now that he's sated and the overwhelming tide of hormones has spent itself in his release, he feels vaguely horrified by his lack of control.  
  
"Sorry about trying to push things," he says sheepishly..  
  
Gadreel shrugs, content with what had passed between them.  He is still a bit confused about how they've ended up here, but he has no objections.  He considers himself equally responsible.  it wasn't as though he had just passively allowed It to happen; he had wanted it, even though it was a bit confusing in its sudden advent and a bit too consuming in its intensity.  He'd never been wanted that way before and he likes it.  
  
He smiles comfortably at Sam and says, "I would have done it - it seemed sudden, but not unappealing - but I knew you would regret it later.  You get overwhelmed."  
  
Sam reddens, wanting to protest but knowing that Gadreel is completely right.  If they had had sex, he probably would have immediately abandoned him while he went and panicked in the shower.  On one hand, it is humiliating having someone turn him down 'for his own good.'  On the other, he can't help but be grateful that his beloved companion knows him so well and has the strength to make good choices for them both.  
  
He smiles almost shyly, "You're probably right."  
  
"I did like that, though," Gadreel tells him, kissing his jaw.  He isn't sure Sam wants to kiss his mouth after that - he isn't sure he'd want to kiss Sam if the situation had been reversed.  He does not like the taste and as jelly-limbed as he is, he is already thinking about getting up to brush his teeth.  
  
Sam smiles, turning his head to kiss him on the mouth.  He doesn't have any really interest in the spit or swallow debate, and he isn't super committed to the whole money shot thing at all; however it worked out, worked out.  He's not one of those guys who are too concerned about where he comes.  All the same, he'd always thought it was kinda a dick move to refuse to kiss someone because they'd done a boss job of getting him off.    
  
 _They'd.  Not "she'd."_ That is a strange change and a strange realization - he totally just come on a dude's face.  He totally just sucked someone off.  
  
"Yeah," he murmurs a little distractedly.  He covers his awkwardness with a laugh, "I kinda... I dunno.  I kinda think we just needed that."  
  
That brings it around again to Gadreel, that question of why.  _Why_ had they needed that?  How had this even happened?  He pulls back so he can look at Sam without going cross-eyed.  
  
"How did that end up happening?  One moment we were upset and the next we were naked."  
  
Sam laughs, then considers that.  Gadreel is millions of years old, but still stunningly naive in some ways.  Humanity is still new to him, and not just as a personal condition.  He has a strange, uncomfortable moment of wondering if he is taking advantage of the ancient virgin because he doesn't know enough to really consent.  
  
He is suddenly glad that Gadreel put on the brakes for a completely different reason.  
  
"We just got worked up I think." Sam replies awkwardly, "I think we just needed to communicate a different way.  Than like in words I mean."  
  
Gadreel nods, immune to Sam's awkwardness, "I do feel better."  
  
Sam feels better as well, despite the utter failure of his gift and nearly jumping his boyfriend without any plan.  He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly.  He's about to suggest a nap when Gadreel bluntly informs him that they both need a shower.  



	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to my beta, stampandsew. :)

They take a few minutes to tidy up the basement work room and set things to rights.  The archangel could have done it with a simple thought, but Dean wants the physical distraction of doing it manually.  Sometimes he needs to do something with his hands so that he doesn’t strangle someone with them; sometimes it’s going and shooting pool, sometimes it’s working on Baby in the garage, and sometimes it’s just doing menial chores. It dissipates his nervous energy.  Right now he has lingering jitters from watching his boyfriend jam a needle into his brother’s neck.  
  
Once the room is clean -- cleaner than it was before they started their adventure earlier this morning -- Dean nods decisively.  
  
“Yeah, okay.  Let’s go and grab something to eat.  I dunno what.  Maybe I’ll head in to town to pick up some groceries or something, make up some burgers.  Sammy’s prob’ly hungry after that too.”  
  
Castiel holds Dean’s hand lightly as they walk back to the library.  Dean is still much too stuck on his hangups to feel comfortable with it, much less enjoy it, but he tolerates the subtle show of affection.  He’s ready to pull away the moment they pass anyone else in the hallway, but as long as they’re alone under the dim incandescent lights he lets the angel curl his fingers between his.  
  
They don’t talk about what just happened.  They just walk in companionable silence, up from the basement to the main floor.  As they get into more traversed areas, Dean tries to subtly pull his hand out of his lover’s grip, but Castiel’s fingers tighten subtly.  
  
Dean rolls his eyes, smiling unwillingly.  
  
“Geez, Cas,” he mutters.    
  
The angel looks at him out of the corner of his eye, his eyebrows flicking up expressively, as though daring him to pull away.  He knows Dean’s rules, but there is no one within line of vision; he can feel that Jacob and Crowley are in the library, Charlie is in her room, Mrs. Tran is somewhere in town, Kevin is sleeping late, and Sam and Gadreel are screwing around in his room.  _Good for them_ , he thinks absently.  
  
He feels a small prickle of jealousy and looks over at his companion out of the corner of his eye.  Knowing that they won’t get caught, he tugs Dean closer by their linked hands and leans up to kiss him.  Dean sputters a little, pulling back to look around Cas down the hallway.  The angel rolls his eyes, then pulls him closer again and kisses him lingeringly, the way that he knows gets Dean going.   He pulls away with one of his faint smiles when Dean starts really kissing him back.  
  
The hunter blinks slowly, a bit flustered, then continues on down the hall as if nothing had happened, “So, ah, got a question.  That thing you did earlier, y’know, when you stabbed me in the soul.  That gonna be a problem?  Like, is it gonna heal up?”  
  
The angel nods, “Yes.  That is, yes it will heal.”  
  
“Gonna take long?”  
  
“Most likely not.”  
  
“You got any experience to back that diagnosis, doc?”  
  
“Any soldier knows basic triage, Dean.  I closed the wound enough that it can heal on its own.”  
  
Dean hums in agreement, tightening his fingers between Castiel’s without thinking.  It’s a comfortable grip, but one that unconsciously expresses a need for the angel’s close contact.  He would never say so, but he would do almost anything for his stupid soul-bonded feather-brain.  He isn’t going to wax poetic over him, but he would readily admit that his life would suck without him.  Like the Kelly freaking Clarkson song.  
  
He lifts their linked hands and presses a kiss to his first knuckle.  Even after all of Castiel’s time in this body, all of the cuts, scrapes, and bruises he’s endured as both a soldier and a rebel, his hands are still smooth.  Paper-pusher hands.    
  
Cas smiles a bit at that, but pulls his hand away as they approach the library.  
  
“So, got another question.  Y’know, when we were in purgatory,” he starts, squelching both his discomfort and his desire to yell at Cas _again_ for staying behind, “There was that thing.  That portal thing.  Is it possible to make those?”  
  
The angel looks thoughtful, “That was a trap door of sorts, created by God.  It’s part of the design, intended to flush out detritus -- sorry -- not intended for that realm.  I don’t think that it would be possible to make one that would be permanent, but most of God’s creations can be mimicked for a short time.”  
  
The hunter doesn’t linger too long on the idea of mimicking God’s work, but he does tuck the concept away for later consideration.  He feels like lately he has developed a strange preoccupation with the impermanence of their acts on Earth, how exorcisms only last until a demon can wriggle its way free again, how spells can only summon ghosts without bringing them back to life.  There is that idea of balance again, of a plan.  
  
It triggers another cold prickle of anxiety as he thinks of another short-term Band-aid fix: the whole End of the World shebang.  They had turned off the apocalypse, but the world kept trying to end, whether it was Leviathans, angels falling, or the gates of Hell potentially getting ripped right off of their hinges.  
  
It scares him to think that it really was just a raincheck, and that everything that had happened and everyone whom they had lost already might have been for nothing.  He shoves that thought right down without even giving it proper attention.  He barely acknowledges it at all as he just nods again, surprisingly forcefully, and half-wishes that he was still holding Castiel’s hand.  
  
"So, ah... okay.  We'll need to get into Hell to set it up, but it could be like, home base.  Get in, get the angels to the ejector seat, shoot those creeps back out into the world."  
  
Castiel still doesn't like the idea of the Winchesters venturing into Hell, but he knows that there is nothing to be done about it; if they don't go, Hell will force itself open and they will be facing the same threats on Earth, only there will be complications like interference from the entire rest of the human race.  
  
"It could be possible, though we still need to get into Hell."  
  
"Getting into Hell is easy," Crowley comments from his perch on the edge of one of the heavy wooden chairs, "Always is.  It's getting out that's the tricky bit."  
  
Castiel knew he was in there, but he is still surprised by his sudden participation in their conversation.  While he personally jumps uninvited into conversations that he has overheard, he is always startled when someone else does the same thing.  
  
Dean looks over at him with a smirk, "Yeah?  Even when the doors are locked shut?"  
  
"If you know your way in.  With Moose's little sojourn through Purgatory, I would have thought you'd be more open to the idea of back doors."  
  
The slightly salacious way Crowley says "back doors" makes Dean a little squirmy.  He clears his throat, trying to let it roll off of him without giving any sort of defensive, uncomfortable response.  
  
"So there's the Reaper road in, got that.  Any others?"  
  
"Of course.  There are loads of ways in;  I could probably poof you two into Hell just using the leftovers in the larder," Crowley says dismissively.  He holds up his index finger, indicating that there was more to his statement, "However, you would still need to get yourselves out."  
  
Dean realizes that he has overlooked the fact that Crowley was a resource on more than just demons.  After the whole blind date with disaster he'd pulled on Jody Mills, they'd learned that Crowley's family included witches.  Of course the bastard would know a thing or two about spells.  
  
"Yeah... we got an idea for that.  Maybe you'd know.  In Purgatory, there's like this portal thing that pukes out the souls that aren't supposed to be there, like angels and humans.  Living tissue.  Cas thinks that we could make something similar, temporarily, in Hell."  
  
"Yes... I do think that would be possible.  Yes," Crowley replies, pleased by the simplicity of the solution.  Still, the logistics of it seem a bit foolish, "But that assumes that you can find the angels and lead them back.  You do realize that Hell is enormous, don't you?"  
  
"I am confident that I could track the angels in Hell," Cas answers, slightly piqued by Crowley's tone, "And I'm certain that they would want to escape; they do not belong there."  
  
"True, true... but they've also signed over their swords to Abaddon... and from what I've heard, she's planning to convert them into Knights.  Do you think you can handle a troop of knights?  You can barely handle one."  
  
Dean mulls over that thought; it was one he'd been considering before, over and over, and he hadn't found a solution.  
  
"Much easier," Crowley offers, "to just find them in Hell, snuff out their little candles, and call it a day."  
  
The idea is repugnant to Castiel, who has been struggling with the idea of punishing these angels in general; he understands why they would have signed with Abaddon during the angelic war on Earth.  There had been no safe place for them, and the shepherds and guardians had scarcely known how to hold their own blades.  There had been no one watching out for them, and Castiel holds himself personally responsible for that.  
  
He shakes his head and says sternly, "No, we will simply take care of Abaddon, voiding their contracts, prior to releasing them"  
  
Dean looks between the two men, his face a closed expression somewhere between skepticism and amusement, then sighs.  
  
"Let's worry about the order of operations after we figure out what needs to happen here.  So Crowley can get us into Hell.  What's it gonna take to make a portal out?"  
  
"I'm going to need to research it; I haven't just memorized every spell in the book," the older man says with an answering smirk as he sits back in his chair, "Shouldn't take me long, though."  
  
Dean glances at his companion angel, then back to Crowley.  He nods, "Yeah, okay.  Let's get moving on this, get it done."  
  
"I said the spell to get you into Hell would be easy... the other one will require some finesse, and it will likely take some very difficult to acquire components."  
  
"Well, we've got you for finesse.  No better way to keep you from double-crossing us than if we bring you along for the ride, make it personal."  
  
Crowley rolls his eyes, vaguely offended that Dean still expects him to behave like a demon even after his great deliverance from evil at the hands of the blessed Saint Sam. It isn't that he has completely given up his self-serving ways -- he had gotten to Hell on his own steam originally, after all -- but he is human enough now not to strand his allies in Hell.  
  
"Whatever lets you sleep at night."  
  
Castiel glances at Dean, wondering how the hunter viewed the other man.  When he looks at Crowley, he sees a clean little human soul.  It isn’t particularly brilliant or unique as far as souls go -- nothing compared to the Winchesters -- but it is simply human.  Uncontorted though flawed, and nothing more than human.  There is no remnant of the demonic about Crowley now, though Dean still treats his native personality as though it is the outward manifestation of a twisted soul.  In reality, it’s just sarcasm and a decent number of jokes at his expense.  
  
He wonders if Dean will ever see Crowley as human or change the way that he treats him.  
  
\-------------  
  
Arakiel’s time away gives her time to think with the depth and intensity that is unique to angels.  By the time she touches down on earth two days later, her expansive mind is clear and she has decided on a course of action.    
  
She will kill Abaddon.  
  
The truce between them has an indefinite end; the bargain was not one that Abaddon had openly accepted and the terms are only loosely structured.  It’s entirely possible that the demon queen will get tired of waiting and come to play.  Arakiel is still wounded, still slowed by her partially healed injuries, and she is uneager to re-engage without a strategy.  
  
Or an ally.  
  
As she walks down the country road, winding her way through the thin snow, she considers how she will offer her alliance to the last remaining archangel.  Little Castiel, whose native form, even transformed into the highest order of angels, is still dwarfed by hers.  He is strong but small, sharp-lined and quick; it wounds something in her to think of placing herself below his command, but at the same time she understands that the hierarchy has changed and that Castiel can offer her a unique protection.    
  
All the same, it pricks her pride to submit herself to a younger angel, even if their goals may temporarily align; from Allison’s recent memory, she knows that the inhabitants of the bunker are struggling with how to handle the threat that Abaddon presents in her new form.  Her assistance is something that she can barter, something that can buy her time.  
  
She pauses to look back at her footprints, which look like sooty little smudges against the otherwise unbroken white ground.  This vessel has small, surprisingly elegant feet; Arakiel doesn't mind them, or the way her body shifts and sways when she walks.  She could easily fly, but there is something strangely cathartic about simply putting one foot in front of the other.  She feels the cold, but not the way that a human would; she registers it as a condition of the air and ground, a slowing of the molecules and a lack of heat, but it doesn’t hurt her or affect her body.  
  
Sighing, she realizes that she is also stalling.  She doesn’t want to lower herself again to asking for help; Malachi had been a pretentious rabble rouser, but he had at least been an old, established angel.  A seasoned general and a brilliant speaker whose focus was on his brethren.  By contrast, Castiel is little more than a hastily promoted soldier who is clearly in love with humanity.  
  
She smirks to herself, thinking that it’s not just an abstract concept; Castiel loves humanity, but he also loves a specific human above all others.  It intrigues her, but it also disgusts her to see an archangel intellectually slumming.  Her conception of humans and their place in God’s hierarchy is more similar to Lucifer’s than Michael's; she would never bow to a mortal man, much less place her body beneath his.    
  
While she is offering herself to Castiel’s command, she has no intention of taking orders from Dean or Sam Winchester.    
  
And that _Crowley_.    
  
The “former king of hell,” turned human.  As if any creature who could be trapped and transmuted so easily deserves to sit on Lucifer’s throne.  She bristles at the thought, but pushes it down where it will not cause her conflict; she has task to complete  and focusing on the past could only serve to distract and anger her.  At this point, her path seems clear.  
  
Suddenly weary of the snow, Arakiel takes flight.  Her broad wings bring her to the doorstep of the bunker in one smooth stroke, leaving a confusingly aborted trail of footprints several miles behind her.    
  
She looks at the door for a moment, easily sensing its wards and protections. Cocking her head to the side, she considers the specific sigils she can recognize at the outset.  There are a variety of languages and special symbols, some grounded in history as old as she is, some that she doesn't know because her imprisonment predates their design.  Standing where she is, she almost feels disoriented, as though she doesn’t quite know where she is; she’s half-surprised that she was even able to find her way back to this place with the heavy blanketing of sigils over the architecture.  
  
The angel knows that she should alert the others to her presence, but she isn’t quite ready.  She reaches into her pocket and pulls out her phone, then taps in the number that she recalls from Jacob’s mind.  As the tone rings through, she is aware of heavy static and realizes that the wards have an effect on this technology as well.  
  
“Hello, Jacob Mueller.”  
  
“Jacob,” she repeats in her soft, strangely accented voice, “I am Arakiel.  Please join me on the front step of this structure; I need to entreat your assistance.”  
  
There is silence on the other end of the line.  The man that she is talking to is not the same as Allison and is not as likely to blindly offer himself up for her use again.  She can feel the college girl’s self-centered ambition threaded through every exchange that they have shared.  By contrast, Jacob was a quieter presence during her occupation of his body.  Perhaps because he is older, perhaps because he is self-assured and confident of his place in his world, he is able to turn his interests outward.  
  
“Please,” Arakiel says in a soft, compelling voice, “It’s important.”  
  
“What is it about?” Jacob asks carefully.  
  
The angel considers for a moment what to say.  The truth is compelling enough without embellishment or playing on his sense of chivalry, but she doesn’t know him well enough to be certain that he will join her again.  Separated as they are by the warded walls, she is fully reliant on her words to convince him.  
  
“I am going to undertake a difficult task to kill the demon who threatens Allison and me.  I would like to remove her from the conflict.”  
  
There is silence again before Jacob asserts, “So you want to include me in that conflict instead.”  
  
“Your body is stronger and your mind has a greater capacity to contain my power; I can expend more of myself without worrying about my very grace damaging your body.  I am confident in my ability to win, particularly if I am allied with Castiel.  The danger to you is minimal.”  
  
“And how ‘bout after?  You going to just wear me around indefinitely?”  
  
“No… Allison prefers to be my vessel, though she can’t contain me for more than a few days at a time... and not with any great expenditures of my grace.  I must continue to switch between bodies in order to have a corporeal form.”  
  
“I don’t care if you ‘continue to have a corporeal form,’” Jacob tells her flatly, “I have a life to go home to.”  
  
Arakiel sighs softly, closing her eyes and looking at the sparkles behind her eyelids.  She responds easily, “Will you help me this one time?”  
  
The discussion with Crowley had stuck with Jacob; he knows enough now to know that Arakiel is smarter than he is.  Part of him wants to outsmart her just out of a strange sense of pride, but the greater part, the logical part, simply wants to use the information that Crowley provided in their conversation.  While he doesn't believe that the angel would harm him, it doesn’t mean that Arakiel will understand or acknowledge his needs, much less put them above her own.  
  
“On certain conditions.”  
  
“Which are?”  
  
“This is a one-time deal.  If I do this, you are never allowed to use my body -- my vessel -- again.  You won’t ask, you won’t do it.  As soon as this demon thing is dead, you let me go and figure out the rest on your own.”  
  
Arakiel mulls that over.  Vessels that can contain her are rare, but they aren’t unheard of.  She can look at the glowing little human souls around her and gauge who is suitable -- only the brightest.  The Winchesters are shining little souls, bright and ready for possession by archangels, but they are off-limits to her.  Even so, she has options and she needs Jacob right now.  She can sense that he has drifted closer to her as they were speaking.  
  
“I agree to these terms.  I will release you and I will never again take control of your vessel… and my word is binding, on my name and on my grace.”  
  
The front door opens and Jacob is standing there with his phone in his strong, uncalloused hand.  He looks down at the small blond angel, then licks his lips uncertainly.  He meets her eyes, wondering who Allison really is and why she would want to be a vessel.  He remembers the feeling of peace, like being caught on that warm cusp of sleep, but he doesn’t think someone so young would crave that kind of quiet.  
  
“Then yes,” he says, and it echos along a quarter-second later through their phones' delayed delivery.  
  
There is a brilliant flash of light as Arakiel transfers herself to his body.  Allison slumps, but doesn’t lose consciousness.  She grips the doorframe, suddenly deprived her inhuman strength, and stares at the dark-skinned angel.

“I… don’t understand,” she breathes, looking wounded.  
  
Without knowing Arakiel’s conversation with his other vessel, it’s impossible for Allison to reconcile her most recent memory of warmly sharing a distant planet with this new feeling of being abandoned again.  She doesn’t know how much time has passed, but she doesn’t feel that sickly burn in her muscles or the weariness surrounding her heart or lungs.  She knows that it can’t have been very long, certainly not even close to the threshhold of her strength.  
  
“Go inside, Allison, before you get cold,” he says calmly, reaching over and resting a strong, long-fingered hand on her shoulder.  
  
“I want to go with you,” she insists.  
  
"Not this time."  
  
 _Castiel, I have come again.  This time to offer you my sword._ Arakiel silently tells his brother.    
  
It is only a matter of seconds before Castiel meets him at the door.  The archangel’s eyes are bright and intelligent; as his gaze sweeps over the re-occupied male vessel, he puts together the scene before him.  He hardly acknowledges the blond girl’s presence, even when she darts past him into the foyer to watch their exchange.  
  
When Arakiel speaks aloud, it is in carefully chosen Enochian.  
  
“I wish to help you kill Abaddon.”  
  
Castiel’s eyebrows flick up curiously.  
  
“Why?”  
  
“She has chosen me as a target because I will not join her,” Arakiel answers simply, "I must now fight for my life."  
  
Castiel thinks over what he knows of Arakiel and how he fell for Lucifer.  The details were always somewhat vague to him because he only knew them through many retellings, but he knows that Arakiel had hesitated and did not shed his wings to become a Knight of Hell.  In his absence, Abaddon became Lucifer’s general despite that it was Arakiel’s place at his side.  With a history like that, as well as rumors he’d heard of Arakiel’s prior relationship with Abaddon herself, he can only imagine that there is both some attraction and some conflict.  He certainly would not be surprised if Abaddon wished to kill the angel who she felt had betrayed her before, particularly if a million years imprisonment had not converted Arakiel to her side.  
  
He cocks his head to the side, birdlike, and asks, “Are you in danger now?”  
  
“No, she has offered me a temporary truce.  When I refuse her again, she will kill me.”  
  
“I see,” Castiel replies thoughtfully, his strategic mind whirring with plans and diagrams.  
  
“Hey, what the fuck…” Dean says, nudging Allison out of the way to get to his lover in the doorway.  A moment before, Castiel had disappeared from his seat at Dean’s desk with only a cryptic comment about answering the door; Dean had, of course, pounded up the steps to find out what trouble his angel was inviting into the house.  
  
Looking at Jacob, he can see the change in him again that indicates his status as an occupied vessel.  He has that weight and gravity again, as though the ground should be pressed and crushed under his feet as he walks; somehow Allison imparted the same gravity, but a different kind of power when Arakiel took her.  She was light and seemed quicker, though the power of her movements was undeniable.  
  
“What the hell’s he want?” Dean demands.  
  
“He wants to help us kill Abaddon,” Cas says simply.  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Abaddon is trying to kill him as well.”  
  
“Well, tough shit.  They can kill each other, for all I care,” Dean says, looking at the other angel.  He hasn’t forgotten that Arakiel had tried to kill them on Emily Dwyer’s doorstep, and then again in their own driveway just the other night, “I don’t trust him.”  
  
The ancient angels regards Dean with barely concealed disdain, “I wasn’t offering my allegiance to you.”  
  
Dean bristles, “Yeah, well.  We’re a team ‘round here.  So you gotta work with all of us.”  
  
Arakiel looks from Dean to his archangel companion, mentally dismissing the human, “The two of us could easily defeat Abaddon, without endangering your mortal companions.”  
  
“Look, dude, no.  We don’t know you, we don’t trust you.  You tried to kill us.”  
  
“It wasn’t personal.”  
  
“Pretty damn personal to us,” Dean retorts.  He is angry that Arakiel isn’t looking at him and is conversing entirely with Castiel.  He knows that Cas is an archangel and the name to drop in heaven these days, but it doesn’t change the fact that Dean’s the leader of their little group.  Always had been, always would be.  Maybe some days they swapped responsibilities around a little bit, but Dean is the one who figured shit out and made the plans.  He was the final say.  
  
It really pisses him off that Arakiel doesn’t get that.  
  
Castiel looks consideringly at Dean, then back to Arakiel.  
  
“It is true that we work together,” he acknowledges, “So I will need to discuss an alliance with my brothers in arms.”  
  
That placates Dean slightly, but the brief glances that Arakiel gives him in acknowledgement whip him back up into a state of wounded pride.  He sets his jaw in a way that always sets Castiel's grace on edge, then shakes his head.  
  
"Y'know, Cas, we got enough people on our side right now that I don't think we need anyone who we don't trust.  I don't think I'm ready to have Lucifer's ex down in the dugout with the rest of the team."  
  
 The archangel wants to ask Dean to settle for a moment and consider the help that they'd be refusing, but he can tell already that his lover has made up his mind. Logically, he knows that Dean isn't wrong to be distrustful; there are many reasons not to trust Arakiel that go beyond the eldest Winchester's pricked pride.  In their experiences with angels, few offers of support were actually that;  Gadreel was one of the only ones of his seraphic siblings to have made a full conversion.  
  
He sighs, briefly closing his eyes. It's hardly more than a downward flutter of his dark eyelashes, but it expresses all that he needs to say.    
  
When he turns his attention back to Arakiel, he says quietly, "We will discuss it further.  We know how to find one another."  
  
"So you would leave me in the cold, unprotected?"  
  
"Yeah," Dean says bitingly, "And you better watch it before we toss your party dress out in the snow with you."  
  
 It's rude and he knows it, especially when Allison is standing right there.  However, he's still angry with her for deceiving them, particularly when they were naive enough to bring her into their home and treat her like someone who has been used by an angel.  Knowing what he knows now, knowing that she has willingly given control to Arakiel at least twice, he can hardly relate to her as human.  
  
She hardly seems to register his comment at all, save for the slight press of her shell pink lips.    
  
 Castiel inclines his chin slightly, trying to keep himself as a buffer between Dean and the rest of the world.    
  
"If you are attacked, call me and I will come to your aid," he assures Arakiel diplomatically.  
  
 He can almost hear the 'like hell you will' that Dean is no doubt thinking, but his lover graciously keeps his overprotective comment to himself this time.  He knows that Dean doesn't mean to step on his feathers, but the fact is that sometimes his sharp commentary and possessive posturing undercut Castiel's authority as an archangel.  He can see Arakiel’s judgment and vague disgust in the angle of his eyebrows and the set his wings; for the first time, Castiel feels a twinge of self-consciousness.  
  
"I will do so," Arakiel replies, almost smirking, "And you know how to call me, once your master has made a final determination."  
  
 Arakiel's tone is smooth and mild, though it has that slightly stilted cadence that seems more common among older angels who hadn't spent much time among humans.  There is little to actually take offense at in what he said or how he said it, but Castiel feels a spike of that same uncertainty before as that little barb of judgement needles its way under his skin.  
  
 This time, Dean also realizes how his words reflect on his powerful angel; as fun (and ego stroking) as it is to act as though he has an archangel at his beck and call, there is more equality to their relationship than that and he doesn't like Arakiel's insinuation.  
  
 He clears his throat and says, "Yeah, Cas'll let you know what we all decide."  
  
He nearly groans when he realizes that speaking for Cas again has probably made it worse.  His angel glances over at him and nods minutely in acknowledgement, recognizing that Dean had good intentions, if a poor execution.  
  
"Excellent," Arakiel comments, smiling slightly, "I look forward to decisive news, Castiel."  
  
 With a final glance at Allison, Arakiel bows stiffly from the waist in a movement accentuated by the crisp movements of his unseen wings.  He is satisfied enough by this outcome; he is certain that Castiel will decide in his favor, particularly now that Dean had been made aware of how his comments reflected on his lover.  Arakiel had never been a warrior, but his gift of words and thoughtful application of light social pressure was second only to his one-time mentor.  
  
His wings carry him far, fast, though the effort of flight on his only partially mended wings leaves him again exhausted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The series continues in Runaway, chapter 1 available for your perusal now. :)
> 
> This fic was kind of hard to get through without the frame of a hunt, but it has a lot of important plot stuff for the series... so I hope you enjoyed it. :)


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